l'if-T-2,3 


/;-f 


/  LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

Theological   Seminary, 

PRINCETON,    N.  J. 

^  BR  375  .B5  1837        ^    / 
Blunt,  John  j.  1794-iqrc 


A      DONATION 


Beceiued 


*  April  1**1*8^;  -  ^ 

*  »  !»  ^  rf 

The  publishers  have  great  pleasure  in  offering  to  the  pub- 
lic, the  following  notices  of  this  work.  They  feel  well  as- 
sured, that  the  well  known  character  of  the  sources  from 
which  they  come,  will  secure  for  them  all  the  attention  and 
credit  which  can  be  desired. 

Gamhier,  Feb.  24,  1837. 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &  Co. 

Gentlemen: — You  are  perfectly  welcome  to  the  use  of  my  name, 
hi  recommendation  of  the  "Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,"  so  far 
as  it  has  been  published,  as  a  valuable  depositary  of  the  precious  things 
of  "the  glorious  Gospel  of  the  blessed  God  ;"  to  which  no  inquiring 
mind  can  apply  in  a  prayerful  spirit,  without  edification.  Though  I 
know  not  what  works  are  to  follow,  I  have  entire  confidence,  that  - 
the  editor,  the  Rev.  H.  Hooker,  will  select  such  only,  as  will  be  "  for 
the  edifying  of  the  body  of  Christ."     Yours,  verv  truly, 

CHARLES  P.  M'lLVAIJ^E,  D.  D. 

Bishop  of  Ohio. 

St.  Mary's  Parsonage,  Burlington,  3Qth  March,  1837. 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &l  Co. 

At  a  time  when  the  country  is  inundated  with  a  flood  of  trash,  I 
have  regarded  your  proposal  to  publish  a  Library  of  Christian  Know- 
ledge, as  an  auspicious  sign  of  the  times;  and  I  most  heartily  bid 
you  "God  speed  I"  in  your  commendable  enterprise.  Thus  far,  my 
numerous  avocations  have  prevented  my  particular  attention  to  the 
volumes  which  compose  it,  and  I  can,  therefore,  speak  with  confidence 
only  of  two  of  the  series.  The  volume  which  you  have  now  in  press, 
Blunt's  Sketch  of  the  Reformation  in  England,  I  have  long  considered 
among  the  most  valuable  books  which  the  Church  of  England,  fruit- 
ful in  all  good  works,  has  lately  produced ;  and  the  volume  entitled. 
Popular  Injidelity,  written  for  the  series  by  my  accomplished  and 
intelligent  friend,  the  Editor,  will  take  its  place  among  the  standard 
books  of  our  language.  If,  indeed,  I  had  seen  none  of  the  series, 
such  is  my  confidence,  founded  on  long  and  intimate  acquaintance,  in 
the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker,  who  has  charge  of  it,  that  I  should  not 
hesitate  to  commend  the  undertaking  to  the  confidence  of  the  Church, 
and  to  the  acceptance  of  the  whole  community.  Praying  fervently 
that  He,  who  in  every  good  work  gives  the  increase,  may  direct  this 
Christian  enterprise,  and  make  it  promotive  of  the  Gospel  in  the 
Church,  I  remain  very  respectfully  yours, 

G.  W.  DOANE,  D.  D. 
Bishop  of  New  Jersey. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  8,  1837. 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall,  &l  Co. 

Gentlemen; — In  reply  to  your  communication,  in  reference  to  the 
"  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,"  edited  by  the  Rev.  Herman  Hook- 
er, I  take  pleasure  In  saying,  that  I  regard  it  as  one  of  the  most  valu- 
able and  substantial  publications  of  the  present  day.     The  original 


3 

works  from  the  pen  of  the  talented  editor,  I  regard,  aS  amon^ 
the  ablest  produetions  of  modern  times;  and  his  excellent  taste  has 
led  him  to  select  from  the  Eng-lish  writers,  some  of  the  richest  stores 
of  theological  truth.  1  rejoice  to  knovA^  that  this  work  is  to  be  con- 
tinued, and  I  wish  it  all  success.  In  my  view,  both  the  editor  and 
the  publisher,  are  conferring  upon  the  country  a  rich  blessing  in  this 
publication. 

JOHN  A.  CLARK,  . 
Rector  of  St.  Andrew''s  Churc/i,  Philadelphia^ 

rrinceton,  N.J.  Feb.  18,  1837. 

The  *'  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,"  edited  by  the  Rev.  Herman 
Hooker,  and  published  by  Marshall  &.  Co.  in  a  series  of  small  volumes, 
is  upon  a  plan  well  calculated  to  be  useful.  The  publication  of  reli- 
gious treatises,  characterised  by  sound  evangelical  sentiments,  and  ani- 
mated with  the  spirit  of  genuine  piety,  cannot  but  be  highly  beneficial 
to  the  Christian  community. 

The  five  volumes  of  this  series  which  have  been  already  published, 
meet  with  my  cordial  approbation;  and  if  these  may  be  considered  u 
fair  specimen  of  those  which  arc  to  follow,  the  work  may  be  safely 
recommended,  as  furnishing  materials  for  a  valuable  Christian  Li- 
brary. 

A.  ALEXANDER, 
Prof,  of  Didactic  Theology,  in  the   TJteological  Seininury,  Princeton. 

Princeton,  Feb.  16,1837. 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &  Co. 

Gentlemen: — I  have  attended  with  much  interest  to  the  volumes 
of  the  "Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,"  as  they  have  successively 
appeared;  and  exceedingly  rejoice,  botli  in  the  plan  of  the  work,  and 
thus  far,  in  its  execution.  I  have  a  high  opinion  of  the  piety  and 
the  talents  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hooker,  the  editor,  and  consider  him  as 
well  qualified  to  conduct  a  work  of  this  nature.  If  the  future  vol- 
umes should  bear  a  stamp  similar  to  that  of  those  which  have  hith- 
erto appeared,  I  shall  be  glad — and  every  friend  of  genuine  Christi- 
anity, I  should  hope,  would  be  glad — to  see  them  universally  circulated. 
Wishing  you,  and  the  excellent  editor,  every  encouragement  in  this 
publication,  I  am,  gentlemen,  respectfully  yours, 

SAMUEL  MILLER, 

Professor  of  Eccl.  History  in  the  Theological  Seminary,  Princeton. 

Philadelphia,  March2,  1837. 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &l  Co. 

Gentlemen: — I  have  just  received  your  communication  of  the  28th 
ult.  respecting  the  "  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,"  now  in  the 
course  of  publication  by  you.  I  had  supposed  that  the  work  had  al- 
ready established  for  itself  such  a  character,  as  to  need  no  recommen- 
dation from  any  quarter.  But,  as  you  are  pleased  to  suppose  that 
my  opinion  of  it,  may  be  of  some  use  in  aiding  its  circulation,  I  can- 
not refuse  to  give  it  to  you.  And  I  can  truly  say,  that,  judging  from 
the  character  of  the  works  already  published  in  the  series,  1  think  it 
a  most  valuable  publication;  and  one  well  calculated  to  introduce  and 
cherish  a  taste  for  literature  of  a  high  order,  and  for  religious  senti- 


'^o 


ments,  the  most  evangelical  and  pure.  As  to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hooker, 
your  editor,  I  regard  him  as  one  of  our  most  accomplished  and  intel- 
lectual men.  Any  thing  that  he  adjudges  fit  for  tlie  press,  and  any 
thing  that  comes  from  his  pen,  has  for  me  sufficient,  recommendation 
in  that  very  fact.  His  name  ought  to  be,  for  any  work,  a  full  passport 
to  the  confidence  of  the  public.  His  work  on  "Popular  Infidelity," 
alone,  which  makes  up  your  fiflh  volume,  is  of  itself  sufficient  to  secure 
him  a  high  and  lasting  reputation,  as  a  man  of  profound  tliinking,  of 
very  great  logical  power,  and  of  very  enviable  literary  attainments.  I 
think  that  volume  alone  will  be  worth  the  price  of  the  whole  set. 
Wishing  you  success  in  your  laudable  enterprise,  I  am,  gentlemen, 
very  respectluUy,  your  obedient  servant, 

HENRY  W.  DUCACHET,  M.  D. 

Rector  of  St.  Stephens,  Fhiladeiphia. 

Philadelphia,  March  17,  1837. 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &  Co. 

Gentlemen: — I  have  read  several  of  the  volumes  of  the  "Library 
of  Christian  Knowledge,"  edited  by  the  Rev.  H.  Hooker,  and  desire  to 
express  my  strong  sense  of  the  importance  of  the  project,  and  of  the 
worth  of  the  books,  which  have  been  published.  It  is  a  very  iinpor- 
tant  design  wliich  proposes  to  turn  the  reading  of  the  religious  com- 
munity, from  tlic  lighter  works  of  imagination  which  have  been  rather 
gaining  in  popularity  among  such  readers,  to  a  grave  and  instructive 
class  of  books.  I  consider  Mr.  Hooker's  selection,  to  have  been  emi- 
nently judicious,  as  far  as  regards  the  real  improvement  of  his  readers; 
thougli  I  should  not  be  surprised,  if  some  less  useful  works,  should 
outstrip  tliesa,  in  the  market.  The  worth  of  a  book  is  too  much  de- 
termined, by  the  way  it  sells.  If  the  actual  value  is  the  standard  of 
estimation,  tl)e  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,  will  stand  very  high. 
Respectfully  yours, 

STEPHEN  H.  TYNG,  D.  D. 

Fr07n  the  Rev.  Charles  Henry  Alden,  A.  M.  Principal  of  the  Phila- 
delphia High  School  for  Young  Ladies,  No.  G  Portico  Square. 

As  editor  of  the  "Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,"  it  is  difficult 
to  conceive  of  one  better  qualified  in  all  respects,  than  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Hooker.  Remarkable  for  his  mental  discipline;  familiar  with  our  lite- 
rature, and  especially  with  the  higher  order  of  Theological  Letters; 
habitually  conversant  with  principles  of  human  nature,  and  embracing 
in  his  wishes  to  benefit  others,  all  sensible  and  good  men,  he  has  ren- 
dered a  most  acceptable  service  to  your  readers,  and  secured  an  envia- 
ble  distinction  to  himself. 

The  selected  works  so  far  are,  in  my  judgment,  most  excellent. 
"  M'Laurin's  Essays"  can  never  be  depreciated  but  by  such  as  have 
no  sympathy  with  intellectual  elevation  and  manly  piety.  "  Goode's 
Better  Covenant"  has  already  passed  to  the  second  edition;  and  few 
men  of  intelligence,  but  must  admire  its  chaste,  simple  and  manly 
style;  and  its  clear  discrimination  and  aflfecting  views  of  Christian  doc- 
trines and  Christian  duties.  "  Russell's  Letters,"  comprising  No.  3  and 
4,  are  of  far  more  extensive  application  than  their  title  imports.  No 
person  of  reflection,  whether  he  be  a  religious  man  or  not,  can  fail  c£ 


finding-  both  interest  and  profit  in  the  reading-.  No.  5,  Mr.  Hooker's 
original  work,  has  been  so  reecntly  published,  and  so  extensively  spoken 
well  of,  that  I  will  say  only,  that  if  a  man  desires  the  best  of  com- 
pany, in  which  he  will  find  what  will  please  and  improve  and  dignify, 
during  his  reading  hours,  let  him  discourse  with  "  Hooker's  Popular 
Infidelity."     Yours,  very  respectfully, 

CHARLES  HENRY  ALDEN. 
Feb.  20,  1837. 

Baltimore,  Feb.  15,  1837 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &  Co. 

Gentlemen: — In  answer  to  yours  of  the  4th  inst.  it  gives  me  plea- 
sure to  state,  that  I  have  read  the  volumes  of  the  "  Lilirary  of  Chris- 
tian Knowledge,"  already  published,  and  am  gratified  that  evangeli- 
cal works  of  such  distinguished  merit  have  been  offered  to  the  reading 
community  in  a  form  so  popular  and  attrjctive.  You  have  done  well, 
I  think,  in  securing  the  ecUtorial  services  of  the  talented  author  of 
"  Tlie  Portion  of  the  Soul,"  and  "  Popular  Infidelity,"  whose  well 
known  taste  and  established  orthodoxy,  give  assurance  that  he  will 
select  no  works,  that  will  not  be  worthy  of  perusal,  and  well  adapted 
to  the  peculiar  wants  of  the  churcli,  at  this  interesting  period. 

I  am  happy  to  find,  that  you  design  to  continue  the  i)ublieation 
of  the  Library,  and  sincerely  liope  that  you  will  be  sustained  in  it  by 
the  liberal  patronage  of  the  Christian  public.     Yours,  respectfully, 

J.  P.  K.  HENSHAW,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  March  13th,  1837. 
Messrs  Wm.  Marshall  &  Co. 

Gentlemen: — I  am  gratified  to  learn,  that  you  are  about  issuing  a 
sixth  volume  of  your  "  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge."  The  vol- 
umes already  published  constitute  a  very  valuable  accession  to  our 
stock  of  religious  literature,  and  are  worthy  of  a  place  in  every  Chris- 
tian family.  The  editor  is  well  known  to  the  public,  as  the  author  of 
several  practical  works  of  great  value;  and  I  am  acquainted  with  no 
man  who  is  better  qualified  than  himself,  to  superintend  a  publication 
of  the  kind  in  question.  Believing  as  I  do,  that  you  are  very  effectu- 
ally promoting  the  interests  of  true  religion,  by  placing  witliin  the 
reach  of  American  Christians,  such  works  as  those  contemplated  in 
the  plan  of  your  library,  I  trust  the  enterprise  will  receive  a  liberal 
and  growing  patronage,  which  will  enable  you  to  make  it,  in  extent  as 
well  as  in  character,  a  complete  "Library  of  Christian  Knowledge." 
I  am,  very  respectfully,  yours,  &c.  H.  A.  BOARDMAN, 

Pastor  of  the  Tenth  Presbyterian  Church,,  Philadelphia. 

Baltimore,  Feb.  21th,  1837. 
Messrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &  Co. 

Gentlemen: — I  am  extremely  sorry,  that  it  is  not  in  my  power  to 
comply  with  the  request  contained  in  your  letter.  Tiie  difficulty  arises 
from  no  indisposition  to  accommodate  you,  nor  from  any  want  of 
confidence  in  the  work,  with  which  you  are  furnishing  the  public, 
but  simply  from  the  fact,  that  I  have  only  the  last  three  volumes  of  the 
sQries,  and  of  these,  have  been  so  situated,  as  to  have  readonly  volumes. 


three  and  four.  If  I  had  the  leisure  at  present,  it  would  give  me 
pleasure  to  procure  and  peruse  the  others;  and  then  forward  you  the 
reconiniendation,  which  I  am  sure  I  should  feci  authorised  to  give. 

"  Russell's  Letters,"  I  have  read  with  more  satisfaction  than  I  have 
derived  from  most  of  the  modern  publications  which  have  come  under 
my  notice;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say,  that  the  pleasure  of  perusing 
tliose  two  voluucs,  would  be  an  equivalent  for  the  price  of  the  five. 
In  the  competency  of  the  editor  to  continue  the  series,  I  have  full  con- 
fidence. He  has  given  sufficient  proof  in  the  character  of  the  selec- 
tions alread}'-  made.  I  am  therefore  gratified  to  learn  that  the  "  Li- 
brary of  Christian  Knowledge"  is  to  bo  enlarged.  In  haste,  yours 
truly, 

J.  JOHNS,  D.  D. 

Messrs.  Wm,  Marshall  Sl  Co. 

Gentlemen: — Your  favour  of  the  13th  inst.  was  duly  received. 
But  the  engagements  of  the  season,  through  which  we  have  been 
passing,  must  be  my  apology  for  not  sooner  returning  an  answer. 

I  have  not  read  all  the  volumes  of  "The  Library  of  Christian 
Knowledge,"  but  what  I  have  read,  and  especially  what  I  know  of 
their  able  and  pious  editor,  and  of  his  writings,  make  me  confident  in 
saying  that  the  scries  which  he  is  engaged  in  publishing,  will  prove 
a  valuable  addition  to  the  religious  literature  of  the  country.  We  need 
a  multiplicution  of  such  men  as  Mr.  Hooker,  and  of  sucli  works  as  he 
writes  and  publishes;  and  this  need  should  lead  us  to  receive  most 
thankfully,  and  improve  most  faithfully,  so  far  as  it  shall  extend  the 
rich  supply  which  he  is  furnishing.     Very  rcspertfully,  your  friend^ 

JOHN  L  STONE, 
Rector  of  St.  Paul's  Church,  Boston 

March  27ih,  1837 

Philadelphia,  March  31, 1837. 
?tIessrs.  Wm.  Marshall  &  Co. 

Gentlemen: — Few  men  exert  a  more  decided,  extensive,  and  lasting 
influence  upon  society  than  Booksellers;  and  in  these  times,  when  sa 
many  prostitute  the  press  to  gratify  and  increase  the  appetite  for 
books  that  are  worthless,  or  decidedly  imnioral  in  their  tendency;  it 
is  exceedingly  gratifying  to  find  here  a  firm,  who  bring  notliing  be- 
fore the  world  which  can  injure  their  race.  So  far  as  I  have  noticed, 
you  have  as  yet  published  notlung  at  which  you  need  blush,  should 
you  meet  the  book  on  the  parlour  table  of  your  best  friend. 

Among  otliers  of  your  productions,  I  have  read  your  "  Library  of 
Christian  Knowledge,"  edited  by  Mr.  Hooker.  Ever  since  I  read  the 
little  work  of  Mr.  H.  entitled  "  The  Portion  of  the  Soul,"  I  have  felt 
sure,  that  he  was  safe;  by  which  I  mean,  that  any  work  to  which  he 
might  prefix  his  name,  would  be  a  sound,  discreet,  judicious  book. 
His  taste  is  correct,  discriminating;  and  his  own  pen  at  times,  is  guid- 
ed by  a  hand  of  no  ordinary  strength.  Honestly  attached  to  the; 
Episcopal  Church,  he,  nevertheless,  is  so  endowed  with  the  limbs  ofa 
man,  and  the  heart  of  a  Christian,  that  his  denominational  habits  do 
not  hinder  him  from  appearing  in  a  working  dress,  in  the  vineyard 
ejT  his  Master.     I  can   sincerely  recommend  the  "  Libraryj"  as  cou^ 


taining  such  works  of  practical  piety,  as  will  be  useful  in  every  famr- 
ly,  and  1  could  wish  that  the  circulation  of  such  works  might  banish 
the  light  reading  of  the  age.  1  hope  your  circulation  will  be  very 
extensive.     Respectfully  yours, 

J.  TODD. 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  CHRISTIAN  KNOWLEDGE.  Edited  by 
the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker,  A.  M.  Author  of "  The  Portion  of  the 
Soul,"  &,c. 

Four  volumes  of  this  series  have  appeared,  and  if  we  may  consider 
these  as  a  specimen  of  the  work,  we  congratulate  the  Christian  public 
on  the  prospect  of  being  supplied  from  time  to  time,  with  a  rich  feast 
of  evangelical  matter,  calculated  to  give  nourishment  and  refreshment 
to  the  spiritual  life  of  believers. 

M'Lanrin's  Essays  is  not  a  recent  work,  but  the  lapse  of  years  can 
never  destroy  its  value.  While  tlie  observations  of  the  author  are 
strictly  orthodox,  they  are  philosophical,  and  if  read  with  candour  and 
attention,  must  have  a  powerful  effect  in  correcting  mistakes  and 
expelling  prejudices  where  they  have  been  imbibed,  and  in  enlighten- 
ino-  the  mind,  and  invigorating  the  faith  of  the  sincere  Cin'istian.  We 
would  strongly  recommend  the  perusal  and  reperusal  of  these  essays 
to  the  young  theologian.  Too  great  a  proportion  of  time,  we  fear,  is 
spent  by  the  young  ministers  of  our  day  in  light  reading,  which,  while 
it  gratifies  a  prurient  curiosity,  has  no  tendency  to  strengthen  the 
mind.  The  effect  produced  is  superficial  knowledge,  and  a  distaste 
for  deep  and  solid  research.  Religious  people  are  nov/  distinguished 
for  bustling  activity  and  a  show  of  benevolence  and  zeal;  but  there  ex- 
ists a  sad  deficiency  of  profound  and  systematic  knowledge  even  in 
those  who  have  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  a  liberal  educ:Uion. 

The  whole  life  and  energies  of  M'Laurin  were  devoted  to  the  highest 
good  of  his  fellow  men;  and  this  lovely  principle  beams  forth  brightly 
in  his  works.  Originality,  truth,  and  beauty,  are  prominent  charac- 
teristics  of  his  writings.  *  *  His  elements  of  thought,  from  whatever 
source  they  are  drawn,  from  external  Nature,  from  the  exercises  and 
sentiments  of  the  soul,  or  from  the.  mysteries  of  redemption,  are 
formed  into  complete  emblems  of  the  richness  and  peculiarity  of  the 
mind  from  which  they  proceed.  The  advantages  of  a  well  balanced 
mind,  of  a  proper  disciplineof  all  the  povt'crs,  and  a  nice  adjustment  of' 
them  to  each  other,  is  strikingly  seen  in  these  essays. 

In  conclusion,  \vc  would  say  the  rieimess  and  power  of  thought,  the 
simplicity  and  greatness  of  conception  in  M'Laurin  can  be  realised 
only  by  his  readers;  and  to  those  who  would  study  the  revelation  of 
God  to  man,  in  its  symmetry,  its  magnitude,  its  intrinsic  excellence, 
"its  easy,  free,  and  unincumbered  plan,"  these  essays  will  be  a  most 
powerful  assistance. — N.  Y.  Literary  and  Theolog-ical  Review. 

Library  of  Christian  Knowledge,  Fo/.?.  3,  4,  5;  Edited  by  Rev. 
Herman  Honker.  Philadelphia:  W.  Marshall,  1836. — Tliis  series  is,  as  u 
course  of  rare  and  valuable  works  in  the  practical  department  oftlieo- 
logy,  far  in  advance  of  any  that  has  ever  been,  published  in  the  United 
States.  "M'Laurin's  Essays,"  and  "  Goode's  Better  Covenant,"  the 
first  of  the  course,,  are  intellectually  and  evangelically  works  of  suck 


high  character,  and  withal,  so  httle  known  liitlierto  to  the  American 
pubUc,  that  Mr.  Hooker  has  already  won  for  his  "  Library"  golden 
opinions,  and  the  announcement  of  a  new  volume  of  the  series,  is  ta- 
ken by  the  reading  community  as  an  invitation  to  a  spiritual  and  intel- 
lectual banquet,  where  "  nothing  common  or  unclean"  will  be  pre- 
sented  to  the  taste.  Vols.  3  and  4  contain  "  Letters  Practical  and 
Consolatary ;  designed  to  illustrate  the  nature  and  Tendency  of  the 
Gospel ;  by  the  Rev.  David  Russell,  D.  D. ;  with  an  Introductory  Es- 
say, by  the  Rev.  H.  A.  Boardman,  Philadelphia.''''  The  hasty  glance 
which  we  have  had  opportunity  to  bestow  on  these  volumes,  has  satis- 
fied us  that  they  are  worthy  successors  to  those  of  the  series  already 
before  the  public.  This  is  sufficient  praise.  The  5th  volume  contains 
an  essay  by  the  Editor,  the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker,  A.  M.  on  "  Popular 
Injiddity .''''  Mr.  Hooker  is  already  extensively  and  favourably  known 
as  an  author,  through  his  work,  entitled  "Tlie  Portion  of  the  Soul." 
We  have  read  his  volume  on  "  Popular  Infidelity,"  much  to  our  plea- 
sure and  edification.  Mr.  Hooker  has  a  clear  and  philosophical  mind, 
which  analyses  truth  to  its  simplest  elements,  and  presents  it  in  pure, 
plain,  Saxon  English. — Christian  Witness,  Boston,  Aug.  12,  1836. 


THE  BETTER  COVENANT  PRACTICALLY  CONSIDERED. 
By  the  Rev.  Francis  Goode.  Vol.  2,  Library  of  Cliristian  Know- 
ledge. 

The  Better  Covenant. — TJiis  work  of  the  Rev.  Fijancis  Goode,  has 
recently  been  publis'aed  as  the  second  volume  of  the  Library  of  Chris- 
tian Knowledge,  by  Messrs.  W.  Marshall  &  Co.  of  this  city.  The  best 
characteristic  of  the  work  probably  is,  its  futhful  development  of  Scrip- 
tural truth,  in  language  entirely  appropriate  to  the  importance  of  the 
subject,  wliile  it  is  so  clear  and  satisfactory  as  to  be  easily  understood 
by  the  plainest  reader.  Its  character  in  other  respects  is  well  and. 
justly  expressed  in  the  letter  of  Bishop  MTlvaine  contained  in  the 
preface. — Episcopal  Recorder. 

From  the  N.  Y.  Christian  Inielligencer.. 

The  Better  Covenant. — We  have  read  this  work,  of  which  we  had 
not  previously  heard,  with  great  and  nnminglcd  pleasure.  It  has  re- 
minded us  of  Jewell,  Hopkins,  Leighton,  &c.  of  the  church  of  which 
he  is  a  member,  in  gei-iorations  gone  by,  as  well  as  Owen,  Flava,  &c. 
among  the  non-conformists,  as  it  unfolded  the  choicest  of  matter,  of 
sound  evangelical  doctrine  moulded  in  the  happiest  form  of  experi- 
ence, and  practice.  The  author  is  at  present  lecturer  at  Clapham,. 
known  to  many  as  the  rcsidctice  of  V/i!berforce,  Thornton,  and  others 
greatly  distinguished  by  piety  and  philantiiropy,  and  was  formerly 
lecturer  in  the  mission  church  in  Calcutta.  Bishop  MTlvaine  in  a 
recommendatory  letter  thus  speaks  of  it:  "As  a  book  of  divinity;, 
divinity  as  it  should  be,  not  cold,  and  abstract  and  dead,  freezing  the 
affections  v/hilc  it  exercises  the  intellect,  but  retaining  the  living 
beauty,  and  heart  affecting  interest  of  the  revelation  it  proceeds  from 
— divinity  adapted  to  the  intellectual  wants  of  the  closest  students  of 
divine  truth,  which  provides  the  simplest,  and  sweetest  nourishment 
for  the  spiritual  necessities  of  the  liumblest  Christian ; — As  a  book  of 
practical  piety,  especially  in  regard  to  the  display  it  gives  of  the  no- 


8 

thingness  of  the  sinner  out  of  Christ,  and  the  completeness  of  the  be- 
liever in  Christ,  and  its  tendency  to  promote  a  spirit  of  active,  cheerful 
obedience,  by  all  those  motives  of  thankfulness,  love,  peace,  and  joyful 
hope,  which  belong  to  the  adoption  of  sons — I  know  of  no  book  of 
the  present  age  more  valuable.  Students  of  divinity  will  find  it  a 
book  to  be  studied.  Readers  of  devotional  writings  will  find  it  full  of 
divine  knowledge,  of  experimental  truth,  and  of  excitements  to  prayer^ 
and  praise."  With  this  strong  recommendation  of  Bishop  M'llvaine, 
we  feel  ourselves  willing  to  accord. 

The  first  volume  of  the  series  of  the  Library  of  religious  knowledge, 
is  M'Laurin's  Essays,  a  work  of  acknowledged  standard  excellence. 
If  the  succeeding  volumes  should  be  equally  valuable  with  the  two 
already  published,  the  series  will  have  a  just  claim  upon  the  patronage 
of  our  religious  public.  We  have  seen  it  stated  that  it  is  designed  to 
introduce  into  the  series.  Letters  on  Religious  Subjects,  lyihe  Rev.  Da^ 
vid  Russell,  of  Dundee,  Scotland,  a  work  little  known  to  American 
Christians,  but  of  very  sterling  merit. 

From  the  Episcopal  Recorder. 

The  Better  Covenant  Practically  Considered. — The  above  is 
tlie  title  of  a  work  which  has  recently  been  published  in  this  city,  as 
the  third  volume  of  the  Christian  Family  Library,  edited  by  the  Rev. 
Herman  Hooker.  The  author  is  the  Rev.  Francis  Goode,  of  the 
Church  of  EnglancV  an  accomplished  scholar,  and  most  devout  and. 
godly  man.  Many  excellent  treatises  upon  practical  and  experimen- 
tal religion  have  been  issued  from  the  press  witliin  the  last  few  years, 
but  none  that  we  have  seen  is  at  all  to  be  compared  with  this.  In- 
deed, we  think  it  decidedly  the  best  book  of  tlie  kind  we  have  ever 
read.  We  know  of  none  in  which  the  glory  and  excellency  of  Christ's 
salvation  is  so  clearly,  fully  and  delightfully  presented  to  the  mind.. 
Throughout,  Christ  crucified  is  all  in  all  to  the  siimer's  soul.  Accor- 
dingly, as  it  richly  deserves,  it  is  spoken  of  in  the  highest  terms  of 
commendation,  by  both  clergy  and  laity.  Some  of  the  former,  beliew 
ing  that  they  could  not  in  any  other  way  more  effectually  preach  the 
Gospel  in  all  its  frecness  and  richness,  have  even  recommended  it  from 
the  pulpit  to  their  congregations. 

We  would  wish  to  see  his  book  in  every  family  in  the  land.  We 
are  deeply  persuaded,  that  no  Christian  could  rise  from  its  perusal 
without  more  enlarged  and  affecting  views  of  what  his  Saviour  had 
done  for  him,  without  more  humility,  penitence  and  gratitude  to  God, 
and  without  a  more  fixed  determination,  or  divine  aid,  to  follow  on  to 
know  the  Lord  and  to  be  filled  with  all  the  fullness  of  God. 

Goode's  Better  Covenant. — We  have  had  but  little  time  to  ex- 
amine this  book;  but  have  seen  enough  of  it  to  desire  the  opportunity 
of  giving  it  an  attentive  perusal.  It  is  undoubtedly  a.  good  book,  wriU 
ten  by  one  who  gives  strong  evidence  of  his  own  personal  interest  in 
the  better  Covenant  than  the  covenant  of  works.  He  is  much  of  an  old 
fashioned  divine  for  one  of  modern  times,  who  makes  Christ  all  in  all 
in  the  sinner's  salvation,  Tlie  edition  of  Goode,  publisiied  by  Wm. 
Marshall,  Philadelphia,  contains  a  preface  and  table  of  cojitents^  by  tho 
Rev.  Herman  Hooker. — Fhiladelplnan.. 


Goode's  Bettkr  Covenant. — Tliis  volume  is  made  up  of  Lec- 
tures by  the  Rev.  Francis  Goode,  a  clerg-yman  of  the  Church  of 
England,  on  portions  of  the  8th  chapter  of  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  and  portions  of  his  Epistle  to  the  Philippians.  Mr.  Goode 
is  understood  to  be  one  of  tlie  brightest  spiritual  lights  of  the  mother 
Church.  The  introduction  by  Mr.  Hooker,  contains  a  letter  of  Bishop 
M'llvaine,  in  which  he  expresses  great  satisfaction  in  view  of  the  re- 
publication of  the  work  in  this  country,  and  classes  the  author  with 
the  Bickersteths,  Noels,  Melvilles  and  Wilsons  of  the  Church  of 
England.  We  have  not  had  opportunity  to  read  the  book  in  course, 
but  have  formed  a  high  estimate  oi'its  intellectual  and  evangelical  ex- 
cellence from  the  parts  which  have  fallen  under  our  notice. — Christian 
Witness. 

The  author  of  Ihis  work  is  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England. 
This  book  is  replete  with  practical  tiiought  and  instruction  on  some  of 
the  most  important  doctrines  of  Ciiristianity.  It  is  a  work  which  it 
gives  us  a  pleasure  to  recommend  to  readers  in  every  church,  and  of 
every  class.  We  have  copied  an  extract  from  it  on  the  first  page  of 
this  paper,  under  the  head  of  "  Views  of  Doctrine. — So.  Religious 
Telegraph,  June  10,  1836. 

Wohave  read  this  book  with  great  pleasure.  Tlie  author,  a  clergy- 
man of  the  Church  of  England,  appears  to  have  learned  from  the  Bi- 
ble the  same  great  trutlis  of  Christianity  which  strongly  mark  the  wri- 
tings of  John  Calvin,  Leighton  and  Owen.  Bishop  M'llvaine  says, 
"  I  am  truly  rejoiced,  that  the  theological  literature  of  this  country  is 
to  be  enriched  with  the  addition  of  so  excellent  a  work." — Sold  at  the 
Bookstores  of  Messrs  Yale  &.  Wyatt. — So.    Religious  Telegraph. 

Library  of  Christian  Knowledge. — This  will  undoubtedly  prove 
to  be  a  most  valuable  series  of  books.  The  editor  is,  at  once,  a  man  of 
genius,  taste  and  erudition,  and  we  are  quite  sure  that  no  work  will 
bear  his  name  as  editor,  which  is  not  possessed  of  sterling  merit.  Two 
volumes  of  this  series  have  already  appeared:  the  first,  M''Laurin's 
Essays,  we  noticed  some  time  since  as  a  volume  rich  in  profound  and 
valuable  thought;  the  second,  "  Goode's  Better  Covenant,'"  is  now  be- 
fore us.  The  writer  is  a  living  divine  of  the  Church  of  England,  but 
the  book  has  nothing  in  it  of  a  sectarian  character.  Bishop  M'llvaine 
(in  a  letter  to  the  Editor)  says,  "As  a  book  of  practical  piety,  I  know 
of  no  book  of  the  present  age  more  valuable."  This  certainly  is  high 
praise  and  comes  from  a  high  source:  if  we  do  not  esteem  tlie  work 
quite  as  highly  as  the  Bishop,  (perhaps  because  we  have  not  studied 
it  as  carefully,)  we  are  fully  prepared  to  pronounce  it  a  most  excellent 
book.  We  understand  that  another  volume  is  nearly  ready  for  publi- 
cation, which  is  to  be  followed  by  an  original  work  on  Infidelity  from 
thr  pen  of  the  accomplished  editor. — Boston  Traveller. 

This  volume  cannot  be  read  by  the  pious  without,  sensible  profit.  It 
breathes  the  very  spirit  of  ardent  piety,  and  directs  continually  to 
Christ,  as  the  only  source  of  strength  and  growth  in  grace.  The 
kind  of  faith  here  inculcated,  is  not  a  cold  rational  assent  to  general 


10 

propositions,  but  a  cordial,  living  principle  of  action,  the  exercise 
of  wiiich  is  commonly  accompanied  with  a  sweet  persuasion  of  pardon 
and  acceptance.  Notliing  animates  and  encourages  the  pious  soul  in 
its  spiritual  pilgrimage  so  much,  as  the  smiles  of  the  great  Captain  of 
Salvation. — Biblical  Repertory,  Princeton. 


LETTERS  PRACTICAL  AND  CONSOLATORY,  DESIGNED 
TO  ILLUSTRATE  THE  NATURE  AND  TENDENCY  OF 
THE  GOSPEL.  tJy  the  Rev.  David  Russell,  D.  D.  with  an  In- 
troductory Essay,  by  the  Rev.  Henry  A.  Boardman.  Vol.  3  and  4, 
Library  of  Christian  Knowledge. 

We  arc  much  gratified  that  the  theological  writings  of  the  Rev. 
Doctor  Russell  of  Dundee,  begin  to  attract  the  attention  of  American 
readers.  The  editor  could  not  easily  have  hit  upon  a  work  better 
adapted  to  instruct  and  comfort  the  pious  reader,  than  these  small  vol- 
umes of  letters.  They  are,  we  think,  the  best  productions  of  the  gifted 
author's  pen.  They  appear  to  have  been  written  in  the  coarse  of 
a  real  correspondence,  which  gives  them  a  greater  freedom  of  style 
than  could  easily  be  attained  in  letters  originally  intended  for  the 
press.  Though  the  letters  are  practical,  and  particularly  suited  to 
afford  rich  consolation  to  the  children  of  sorrow,  they  are  nevertheless 
eminently  instructive.  Tliere  are  few  books  from  which  a  clearer 
idea  can  be  obtained  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Christian  system  than  from 
these  Letters.  They  contain,  as  do  his  other  writings,  the  pure  Gos- 
pel of  Jesus  Christ.  The  peculiar  excellency  of  these  volumes  is,  that 
you  have  the  truth  exhibited,  not  in  a  controversial  or  even  a  system- 
atic form,  but  in  its  practical  bearings,  as  a  guide  both  to  faith  and 
practice.  The  style  is  clear,  concise,  and  easy;  and  possesses  a  viva- 
city which  keeps  up  the  interest  of  the  reader. — Biblical  Repertory 
arid  Theological  Revieiv. 

Russell's  Letters,  Practical  and  Consolatory,  designed  to  illus- 
trate the  nature  and  tendency  of  the  Gospel,  with  an  introductory 
Essay  by  the  Rev.  H.  A.  Boardman;  forming  volumes  3d  and  4th  of 
the  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge;  edited  by  Rev,  Herman  Hooker. 
This  work  lias  just  been  issued  by  the  enterprising  publishers,  Wm. 
Marshall  &  Co.  The  Introductory  Essay  is  a  well  written  exposition 
of  the  characteristics  of  the  work,  abounding  with  specimens  of  the 
happy  style  and  temper  of  the  author.  He  expresses  the  opinion  that 
no  work  of  recent  origin  is  so  worthy  to  be  read  and  admired  by  all 
classes  of  Christians  as  these  letters  of  Dr.  Russell.  The  examination 
which  we  have  given  them  leaves  us  with  the  opinion  that  this  is  a 
just  estimate  of  tlieir  value.  The  Letters  are  written  in  a  natural,  in- 
telligible, and  appropriate  style.  A  spirit  of  ardent,  simple,  and  affec- 
tionate piety  runs  through  them,  wliich  must  win  the  confidence  an^ 
awaken  the  interest  of  the  reader.  Tlie  author  has  published  several 
other  works,  all  of  which  are  in  high  repute;  but  his  Letters  have,  per- 
haps, been  more  popular,  and  more  extensively  circulated  than  any 
other  of  his  productions. — Commercial  Herald. 

Russell's  Letters,  in  two  volumes,  exhibit,  in  a  chaste  and  intel- 
ligible style,  the  most  important  features  in  the  plan  of  redemption, 
and  of  Christian  duty.    The  letters  were  actually  addressed  to  an  in- 


11 

dividual,  previous  to  publication,  for  this  purpose;  a  circumstance 
which  has  been  justly  thought  calculated  to  ensure  for  them  a  pecu 
liarly  practical  character.  Those  who  desire  clear  and  profitable  in- 
struction upon  the  subject  of  religion,  from  an  original,  but  judicious- 
well  balanced  and  pious  mind,  will  not  be  disappointed  in  perusing 
Russell's  Letters. — Episcopal  Recorder. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Boardman  thus  speaks,  in  his  Introductory  Essay,  of 
the  author  and  his  works: — "The  name  of  Dr.  Russell  is  famihar  to 
the  friends  of  Christ  throughout  the  united  kingdom — and  liis  eminent 
piety,  talents,  and  usefulness  have  placed  him  in  the  front  rank  of  those 
celebrated  divines,  who  are  justly  regarded  as  an  ornament  of  his  coun- 
try, and  an  invaluable  blessing  to  the  age.  His  various  writings  are 
held  in  high  estimation  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  it  is  not 
a  little  surprising  that  the  extensive  circulation  which  they  have  had 
there,  has  not  led  to  an  earlier  republication  of  them  in  the  United 
States.  Tiiis  series  of  Letters  is  perhaps  the  most  interesting  of  all  his 
works.  Those  who  may  peruse  it,  will  not  deem  the  opinion  an  ex- 
travagant one,  that  it  will  hereafter  rank  with  the  standard  Volumes 
on  practical  religion,  which  find  a  place  in  every  Christian  Library." 

POPULAR  INFIDELITY.     By  the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker,  M.  A. 
Vol.  5,  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge. 

When,  in  our  first  volume,  we  took  notice  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hook- 
er's  "Portion  of  the  Soul,"  we  expressed«the  hope,  that,  from  the  golden 
vein  thus  opened,  we  should  have  olher  and  richer  specimens — and 
we  ventured  to  predict,  tliat,  the  more  it  should  be  worked,  the  finer 
would  be  the  ingot.  We  are  proud  to  record  our  predictions.  In  the 
present  volume  our  most  golden  dreams  are  more  than  realized.  It 
is  a  book  of  an  age;  and  we  will  say  of  a  better  age — "specimen 
melioris  oevi."  It  shall  be  taken  down,  in  the  dark,  from  the  same 
shelf  on  which  the  writings  of  South,  Taylor,  Barrow,  Boyle,  Bates, 
and  Hov/,  repose  in  glory  unsurpassed  of  earth;  and  shall  be  replaced 
again,  when  read,  by  the  most  ardent  lover  of  them  all,  as  Vv'orthy  of 
the  high  companionship.  We  know  what  vv'e  have  said,  and  we  chal- 
lenge doubters  to  the  proof 

It  is  the  object  of  the  author  to  unmask  that  secret  infidelity  of  the 
heart,  of  which  St.  Paul  gives  admonition,  in  his  epi:~tle  to  the  He- 
brews— "  Take  heed,  brethren,  lest  there  be  in  any  of  you  an  evil  heart 
of  unbelief,  in  departing  from  the  living  God" — and  he  has  well  ac- 
complished it.  His  pen  seems  an  Ith Uriel's  spear,  to  strip  the  subtle 
fraud,  v/hich  he  pursues  with  singular  skill,  of  all  its  multiplied  dis- 
guises. His  page  teems  with  illustrations,  the  rarest,  the  aptest,  and 
the  most  beautiful,  of  his  important  theme.  It  is  impossible,  plain  as 
the  truths  are  which  he  speaks,  to  be  offended  with  him,  from  the  pure 
benevolence  which  is  felt  to  be  his  prompter;  and,  such  the  vein  of 
keen,  but  half  rcprassed  and  silent,  humour  w^hich  pervades  the  book, 
that,  once  taken  up,  it  is  impossible  to  lay  it  down  til!  it  is  finished. 
We  began  to  mark  the  passages  which,  for  the  thought  or  the  expres- 
sion, struck  us,  as  we  read,  by  turning  down  the  leaf;  and  the  volume 
lies  before  us,  increased  by  half  its  thickness.  To  review  it,  as  it  de- 
serves, is  not  within  the  compass  of  our  craft.     Not  to  commend  it  to 


12 

universal  notice,  would  ba  to  do  our  readers  an  unpardonable  injustice. 
There  was  great  want  of  such  a  book,  which,  by  its  engaging  charac- 
ter, should  tempt  men  to  become  acfiuaintcd  with  tliemselves — which 
should  expose  the  vanity  and  recklessness  with  wliich  many,  "who 
profess  and  call  themscives  Cliristi.ms,"  are  running  th,c  giddy  round 
of  self-delusion  and  scir-depcndcnce — which  should  bring  home  the 
thoughts  of  men  to  God  and  their  own  hearts;  and  induce  them,  in  tiie 
noise  and  bustle  of  this  restless  age,  to  commune  with  themselves,  in 
their  own  chamber,  and  be  still.  Such  a  book  is  here  furnished — un- 
pretending  and  artless,  yet  sagacious,  powerful  and  persuasive — as 
fearless  as  the  Baptist,  yet  with  tlie  Evangelist's  gentleness  and  meek- 
ness— deep,  searching  and  thorough,  yet  clear  and  intelligible  to  the 
simplest  reader — wearying  none  Vv^ith  its  minuteness  or  prolixit}'-,  of- 
fending none  with  its  abruptness  or  severity,  delightful  to  all  lor  its 
case,  its  perspicuity  and  its  amcnit}'. — Missionarrj. 

It  would  be  far  exceeding  our  limits  to  expatiate  on  the  character 
of  the  age,  or  to  show  by  an  analysis  of  Mr.  Hooker's  work,  how  skil- 
fully and  eloquently  he  has  aimed  to  arrest  its  pernicious  tendencies. 
The  "Popular  Infidelity"  as  well  as  the  "Portion  of  tiie  Soul,"  is  a 
work  eminently  adapted  to  the  age;  and  if  we  have  any  fault  to  find 
with  the  author,  it  is  that  he  does  not  himself  view  it  in  that  light; 
that  he  writes  professedly /o?-  a  class,  instead  of  challenging  attention 
to  the  work  which  he  is  really  accomplishing,  of  writing  for  his  age, 
and  thus  speaking  in  that  loftier  tone  which  the  reformer  is  author- 
ised to  assume.  Infidelity  in  jts  more  subtle  forms,  and  such  as  Mr. 
Hooker  has  described,  is,  we  fear,  a  cliaracteristic  of  the  age:  few  pens 
have  revealed  more  clearly  than  his  its  philosophy  and  impiety,  and 
our  only  regret  is,  that  he  has  not  brought  the  actors  and  the  actions 
of  tlic  Christian  world  side  by  side  with  the  original  which  he  so 
vividly  conceives,  and  thus  given  a  popular  estimate  of  their  deform- 
ity- 

Again,  reminding  the  reader,  that  the  infidelity  of  which  Mr.  Hook- 
or  treats  is  to  be  found  not  in  the  outward  ranks  of  avowed  unbeliev- 
ers, but  in  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  hearts  of  professed  Christians, 
we  beo-  leave  earnestly  to  recommend  the  work  to  general  perusal.  It 
is  written  in  a  pure  strain  of  Christian  philosopliy,  and  should  find  its 
way  to  the  closets  and  afifections  of  all  those  "who  profess  and  call 
themselves  Christians." — New  York  Churchman. 

In  the  very  first  chapter  of  this  work,  one  finds  himself  introduced 
into  a  new  and  delightful  field.  To  most  readers  new  emotions  and 
unaccustomed  trains  of  thought  spring  up  in  the  mind,  awakening 
and  enkindling  the  desire  for  deeper  and  fuller  insight  into  the  great 
truths  there  brought  to  view;  and  as  one  proceeds  ideas  continually 
cluster  around  tlie  mind  with  all  the  interest  and  freshness  which 
novelty  and  a  deep  insight  into  our  nature  can  give  them.  But  here 
let  it  not  be  forgotten,  tliat  an  imperious  call  is  made  upon  our  own 
undivided  attention.  If  we  expect  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  book, 
and  fully  to  grasp  the  author's  argument  in  all  its  relations  and  bear- 
ings, we  must  make  up  our  minds  to  more  of  an  intellectual  effort  than 
is  required  in  the  perusal  of  most  books  which  issue  from  the  press. 


13 

There  is  an  originality  in  the  conception  of  "Popular  Infidelity,"  an 
intellectual  superiority  in  the  execution  to  which  few  books  of  the 
present  day  can  lay  claim. 

On  the  whole  we  think  the  treatise  on  Popular  Infidelity  one  of  the 
best  practical  works  that  has  appeared  for  some  time;  and  we  would 
confidently  recommend  it  to  the  attention  of  all  who  wish  to  become 
intimately  acquainted  with  their  own  character.  It  is  eminently  cal- 
culated to  promote  the  cause  of  deep,  genuine,  and  enlightened  piety, 
and  will  suffer  nothing,  to  say  the  very  least,  in  a  comparison  with  the 
popular  and  useful  works  of  Phillip.  We  have  seldom  seen  a  work 
which  so  accurately  analyses  the  flelings  and  principles  of  the  human 
heart,  lays  bare  the  secret  springs  of  human  action,  and  presents  to 
view  one's  real  self. — Episcopal  Recorder. 

Popular  Infidelity. — This  is  the  fifth  volume  of  the  Library  of 
Christian  Knowledge,  and  a  volume  on  a  subject  which  claims  all  the 
attention  the  author  has  given  to  it.  It  is  a  prominent  part  of  the 
merit  of  his  work  that  he  gives  a  clear  diagnosis,  an  intelligible 
description  of  the  disease  for  wliich  religion  is  a  cure.  The  dis- 
ease is  self-deception  in  various  forms  and  of  various  types. 

Some  of  the  author's  phraseology  relating  to  doctrines  seems  to  im- 
ply belief  in  certain  points  concerning  which  we  should  differ  from 
him.  But  his  views  of  human  ability,  of  the  use  of  reason  in  relation 
to  religion  and  of  spiritual  influences,  appear  to  us  to  be  sound  and 
scriptural.  Without  being  able  to  go  into  a  particular  description  of 
the  work,  we  judge  from  what  examination  we  have  made,  that  it 
may  be  safely  read,  in  general  for  doctrine,  and  every  where  for  re- 
proof and  correction,  by  Christians  of  all  sects. — Boston  Christian 
Register. 

Popular  Infidelity.  By  the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker,  M.  A. 
— This  work  supplies  a  desideratum.  Popular  Injidelity,  of  which  it 
treats,  has  been  too  long  permitted  to  extend  its  influence,  without  any 
direct  opposition  from  the  religious  press.  Those  who  could,  have  re- 
frained from  defending  "the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  Saints;"  and 
Heres}-  has  been  permitted  to  stalk  abroad  triumphantly,  where  the 
principles  aud  doctrines  of  the  Scriptures  sliould  have  taken  prece- 
dence. Every  Christian — every  clergyman  at  least,  who  would  de- 
fend his  belief — should  fortify  himself  with  this  unanswerable  volume. 

Philadelphia  Gazette,  Aug.  8,  18^6. 

Popular  Infidelity.  By  the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker  M.  A. 
— This  is  the  fifth  volume  of  the  Library  of  Cliristian  Knowledge,  and 
is  an  original  work  of  the  accomplished  editor  of  that  valuable  series. 
All  classes  of  Christians  may  find  food  for  reflection  in  the  very  im- 
portant considerations  suggested  by  tlie  author.  The  work  is  not,  as 
might  be  supposed,  a  deft-nce  of  the  outworks  of  Christianity  against 
the  scepticism  of  the  professed  Infidel.  But  it  is  a  most  able  and  elo- 
quent attack  upon  the  practical  infidelity  of  professed  believers.  Eve- 
ry kind  and  degree  of  unbelief  are  powerfully  assailed.  The  secret 
enemies  of  faith  are  dragged  from  their  lurking  places,  stripped  of 


14 

their  disgfuise,  and  held  up  to  the  light  in  their  naked  deformities. 
The  extensive  reading  of  this  work  cnnnot  but  promote  the  cause  of 
religion  in  the  community. — National  Gazette,  Aug.  6.  1836. 

Popular  Iyfidelity.  By  the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker,  belongs 
to  a  class  of  works  which  are  seldom  read  as  extensively  as  they 
deserve.  Its  purpose  is  to  show  to  what  extent  a  practical  disbelief  in 
Christianity  exists  even  among  those,  who  living  in  a  Christian  com- 
munity, and  committing  no  violation  of  its  external  oridinances,  be- 
lieve and  call  themselves  Christians.  That  this  adherence  to  the  form, 
without  retaining  the  substance,  is  too  common  among  all  classes,  is 
a  truth  which  even  superficial  observation  will  render  manifest,  but 
which  Mr.  H.  ilhistrates  by  many  well  chosen  examples.  We  wish 
his  essay  a  circulation  corresponding  to  its  merits. — Commercial  Her- 
ald, Aug.  9.  1836. 

Popular,  Infidelity.  By  the  Rev.  Herman  Hooker,  M.  A. 
—  Wc  have  read  this  book  with  no  ordinary  interest.  The  subject  on 
which  it  treats  is  of  vital  importance  to  every  class  of  readers.  We 
lave  several  valuable  works  upon  this  subject,  but  none,  that  we  know 
of,  which  occupies  the  ground  taken  by  our  author. 

He  has  descended  into  the  dark  arcana  of  the  human  soul,  and  fol- 
lov/ing  the  intricate  winding  of  the  unbelief  through  all  its  hidden  and 
unseen  influences,  has  exposed  the  fallacy  of  that  popular  scntimen- 
talism  which  often  passes  for  religion,  and  shown  the  contrariety  which 
exists  between  the  professed  opinions  and  conduct  of  men,  to  be  owing 
to  the  latent  infidelity  of  the  heart. 

It  will  be  difficult  to  find  a  book,  that  so  drives  us  into  the  contem- 
plation of  ourselves;  that  so  accurately  analyzes  the  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings of  men,  and  so  vividly  exhibits  the  self-flattery,  by  which  we 
cheat  ourselves  into  the  belief,  that  we  reverence  and  admire  the  cha- 
racter of  Giod,  when  all  we  admire  and  reverence,  is  but  the  image  of 
ourselves,  which  we  have  contrived  to  ascribe  to  him. 

In  a  word,  it  is  rich  in  the  most  difficult  of  all  knowledge,  the 
knowledge  of  ourselves.  It  is  full  of  thought;  thought  that  often  sur- 
prises, not  only  by  originality  of  conception,  but  by  the  striking  and 
beautiful  contrast  in  which  it  is  presented. 

Few  persons,  we  imagine,  can  read  any  one  chapter  of  this  book, 
and  not  wish  to  read  the  whole.  The  style  is  colloquial,  nervous,  and 
animated;  the  language,  in  a  high  degree,  Saxon. 

The  autlior  is  peculiary  happy  in  his  citations  from  the  Scriptures. 
The  passages  cited,  not  only  illustrate  and  enforce  the  sentiments  he 
advances,  but  the  manner  of  their  introduction  illustrates  and  enforces 
them;  so  that  they  are  seen  to  possess  a  charm,  and  an  extension  of 
application,  which  the  reader  had  before  failed  to  observe. 

We  have  seldom  read  a  book  in  which  so  little  could  be  anticipated. 
As  the  reader  turns  from  page  to  page,  he  finds  his  curiosity  continu- 
ally excited  by  new  and  unexpected  thoughts,  presented  under  a  rich 
variety  of  beautiful  and  striking  illustration.  When  he  supposes  him- 
self at  the  end  of  the  subject,  it  comes  up  in  a  new  light,  and  new  fields 
of  contemplation  open  before  him. — N.  Y.  Evangelist. 


THE 

LIBRARY 

OF 

mxvtBttun  UnoiMU^tje- 

EDITED   BY 

THE    REV. 

HERMAN    HOOKER,    M.    A., 

AUTHOR  OF 

THE  "portion  of  THE  SOUL,"  &C. 

VOL.  VI. 

-4^ 

LABORE 

^   " 

PHILADELPHIA  : 

WILLIAM 

MARSHALL     AND     COMPANY  ; 

MDCCCXXXVII. 

SKETCH 


REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 


SKETCH 


OF  THE 


REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 


BY  THE  REV.  I.  J.  BLUNT, 

FELLOW  OF  ST.  JOHn's  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE. 

21Jit|)  an  Kntrotmctoo  ilctter, 

TO  THE  EDITOR, 

BY  GEORGE  WASHINGTON  DOANE,  D.  D., 

BISHOP    OF   NEW    JERSEY. 


PAUL'S  CROSS. 


PHILADELPHIA  : 
WILLIAM    MARSHALL   &  CO. 

1837. 


"  They  that  goe  downe  to  the  sea  in  ships,  and  occupie  by  the  great 
waters,  they  see  the  workesof  the  Lord,  and  his  wonders  in  the  deepe. 
For  God  is  marvellous  in  the  surges  and  tempests  of  the  sea :  he  is 
marvellous  in  the  firmament  of  heaven :  but  much  more  marvellous 
is  he  in  the  surges  and  stormy  tempests  of  his  church.  Hcere  may 
we  behold  the  worke  of  his  hands.  This  is  the  shop  of  his  power,  of 
his  wisedome,  of  his  light,  and  truth,  and  righteousnesse,  and  patience, 
and  mercy.  Heere  may  we  see  the  children  of  light,  and  the  children 
of  darknesse :  the  vessels  of  honor,  and  the  vessels  of  shame  :  the  assaults 
of  falshood,  and  the  glorie  and  victorie  of  truth.  Heere  shall  we  see 
how  God  leadeth  even  into  hell,  and  yet  bringeth  safely  backe  :  how  he 
killeth,  aud  yet  reviveth  :  how  he  refuseth  the  full,  and  feedeth  the  hun- 
grie :  how  he  is  the  ruine  of  many,  and  the  resurrection  of  many. 
Heere  may  we  see  the  wonderful!  waies,  and  the  unsearcheable  judge- 
ments of  God. 

Bishop  Jewel,  Sermon  on  Josh.  vi.  1. 


Philadelphia: 

T.  K.  &.  P.  G.  Collins,  Printers, 

No.  1  Lodge  Alley. 


«< 


*'^''»:\fir '■■'J --^ 


'^^*»^««« 


PREFACE 


The  Reformation  is  one  of  the  jnost  remarkable  events 
in  our  history,  wiiether  considered  in  relation  to  politics  or 
religion;  for  its  influence  was  most  powerful  upon  both. 
My  own  reading,  profession,  and  taste  have  led  me  to  regard 
it  in  the  latter  rather  than  in  the  former  light;  and  therefore, 
brief  as  the  following  sketch  is,  it  will  not  be  found  of  the 
nature  of  an  abridgment  of  larger  histories  of  the  Reforma- 
tion which  have  contemplated  it  in  all  its  many  bearings, 
but  a  continuous,  though  succinct  account,  of  its  rise,  pro- 
gress, and  consummation,  chiefly  considered  as  a  great 
Revolution  of  the  Church.  I  have  avoided,  as  far  as  I 
could,  taking  my  materials  at  second  hand.  I  have  been 
governed  in  my  choice  Qf  them  by  a  desire  to  seize  upon 
such  as,  being  characteristic  in  kind,  might  not  be  oppres- 
sive in  number;  and  I  have  worked  them  up  into  a  whole, 
with  less  regard  to  the  line  and  rule  by  which  others  may 
have  wrought  already,  than  to  the  positions  into  which  they 
seemed  of  themselves  to  fall  most  naturally.  If  in  my 
treatment  of  the  many  delicate  and  difficult  questions  which 
such  a  subject  stirs,  I  have  former  writers  with  me,  it  is 
well.  I  have  not,  however,  constrained  myself  to  seek  out 
their  path  and  pursue  it,  though  I  am  too  conscious  of  my 
own  deficiencies,  and  of  the  extreme  uncertainty  of  history, 
to  be  otherwise  than  pleased,  if  I  happen  to  strike  into  it 


X  PREFACE. 

unawares.  If  on  the  same  occasions,  I  have  the  good  for- 
tune to  agree  with  the  voice  of  my  own  times,  it  is  well  too: 
it  is  folly  to  be  singular,  except  for  the  purpose  of  being 
right;  but  still  I  have  not  hearkened  out  for  that  voice,  and 
studiously  walked  by  it.  I  have  gone  as  my  facts  directed 
me,  taking  them  as  1  found  them,  unpacked.  For  those  facts 
I  have  generally  given  my  authorities,  that  my  readers  may 
judge  for  themselves  of  the  credit  due  to  them;  and  for  the 
speculations  which  accompany  them,  whether  doctrinal  or 
practical,  I  may  say  that  they  are  meant  to  serve  the  cause 
of  truth  and  equity,  not  of  party;  it  is  for  others  to  say 
whether  they  are  reasonable,  and  to  let  them  prevail  only 
so  far  as  they  prove  so  —  valeant  quantum  valent. 


INTRODUCTORY  LETTER. 


St.  Mary^s  Parsonage, 

Conversion  of  St.  Paul,  1837. 

My  Dear  Brother: 

When  you  proposed  to  me  that  I  should  write  an 
Introduction  to  Mr.  Bhmt's  "  Sketch  of  the  Reformation  in 
England,"  included,  at  my  suggestion,  in  your  "Libraiy  of 
Christian  Knowledge,"  1  saw  an  admirable  opportunity  to 
invite  attention  to  that  great  crisis  of  the  Christian  world; 
and  I  consented.  As  I  meditated  on  the  subject,  it  deepened 
in  interest,  and  rose  in  elevation,  and  increased  in  magni- 
tude, till  it  became  absorbing  and  overwhelming.  I  felt  that 
an  Essay  on  the  English  Reformation,  that  should  trace 
it  from  its  true  beginnings,  contemplate  all  its  bearings,  and 
carry  out  its  just  conclusions,  was  a  work  to  fill  a  volume, 
and  to  take  up  years.  Is  not  the  "  Sketch"  itself — I  was 
thus  brought  to  think — which  Mr.  Blunt  has  drawn,  the 
very  thing  best  suited  to  the  present  purpose?  In  its  design, 
a  bird's-eye  view  of  that  illustrious  passage  in  the  history  of 


Xll  INTRODUCTORY  LETTER. 

man;  in  its  execution,  rapid,  vigorous,  picturesque;  the  man- 
liest conceptions  in  the  raciest  words;  so  intensely  interest- 
ing that  he  who  takes  it  up  will  never  lay  it  down  unread, 
nor  read  it  without  the  strongest  impulse  to  read  more — 
surely,  this  is  the  very  result  to  which  I  proposed  to  ad- 
dress myself;  and  to  attract  attention  to  the  study  of  the 
English  Reformation,  and  to  make  men  in  love  with  its  en- 
nobling themes,  and  to  imbue  their  minds  with  its  instruc- 
tive lessons,  and  to  possess  their  hearts  with  its  inspiring 
influences,  and  to  inflame  them  with  its  martyr  spirit,  the 
book  itself  shall  be  its  own  best  introduction. 

Were  I  to  designate,  dear  Hooker,  the  branch  of  study 
which  has  fallen  into  the  most  unreasonable  neglect,  and 
which  yet  would  overpay,  with  most  abundant,  and  with  rich- 
est fruits,  the  utmost  cost  of  prosecution,  it  should  be  without 
a  doubt,  the  study  of  Church  History.  *'  It  is  not  St.  Au- 
gustine's nor  St.  Ambrose's  works,"  Lord  Bacon  well  re- 
marks,* "  that  will  make  so  wise  a  divine" — he  might  as  well 
have  said,  so  wise  a  man — "  as  ecclesiastical  history,  tho- 
roughly read  and  observed."  "  There  is,  in  good  truth," — 
we  justify,  while  we  illustrate,  the  words  of  the  great  Philo- 
sopher, by  the  language  of  one  who  is  himself  their  living 
illustration,  the  present  Principal  of  King's  College,  Lon- 
don,!    "  there  is,  in  good  truth,  no  way  so  certain  to  lead 

*  Advovcement  of  Learnings  Basil  Montagu's  edition  of  Bacon's 
works,  Vol.  ii.  p.  102,  Pickering.  1825. 

t  The  Study  of  Church  History  Recommended,  being  the  Terminal 
Divinity  Lecture,  delivered  in  Bishop  Cosin's  Library,  April,  15, 1834, 


INTRODUCTORY  LETTER.  XIU 

US  to  truth,  no  way  so  certain  to  lead  us  to  fixed,  calm, 
and    Christian  views   in   divinity    as     the    study   of  it, 
hy  the  way   of  history.      If  we   take  up   a  '  system    of 
divinity,'    whether  in  the    shape    of  a   body  of  Articles, 
or  a  regular  treatise,  comprising  a  discussion  of  all  the  great 
points  of  the  Christian  covenant,  useful  and  necessary  as 
such  things  are,  each  in  its  own  way^  yet  it  cannot  be  but 
that  they  present  all  these  great  points  to  us  in  a  controver- 
sial view  and  with  a  controversial  air.     This  surely  cannot 
be  desirable.    Our  concern  with  the  great  doctrines  of  the 
Gospel  covenant  is  to  govern  our  hearts,  lives,  thoughts  and 
words  by  them,  to  bring  the  whole  man  into  subjection  to 
those  awful  truths  which  God  himself  revealed  to  us  in  or- 
der to  teach  us  how  we  are  to  live  here,  and  how  to  live  with 
him  hereafter."     Now  it  is  precisely  these  "fixed,  calm, 
and  Christian  views  in  divinity"  which,  in  this  age,  and  es- 
pecially in  this  country,  are  most  wanted — which  are  sought 
for  in  vain  in  the  din  of  religious  controversy  and  the  stir  of 
religious  excitement — and  for  the  want  of  which,  to  the  joy 
of  the  intidel,  and  to  the  shame  and  grief  of  the  meek  search- 
er after  truth,  who  would  walk  humbly  with  his  God,  Chris- 
tianity, at  times,  appears  almost  unchristianised.     And  the 
inquiries  which  would  lead  men  to  them — which  securing  to 
us,  upon  the  certain  warrant  of  "  Holy  Scripture  and  ancient 
authors,"  a  sound  rule  of  faith,  should  establish  for  us  a  so- 

before  the  Rt.  Rev.  the  Dean,  the  Chapter,  and  the  University  of  Dur- 
ham, by  Hugh  James  Rose,  B.  D.,  Chaplain  to  his  Grace,  the  Archbi- 
shop of  Canterbury. 
2 


XIV  INTRODUCTORY  LETTER. 

ber  standard  of  feeling  in  matters  of  practical  religion,  and 
as  it  were,  domesticate  among  us  that  serene  and  dovelike 
Christianity,  which  the  sweetest  spirit  of  our  age*  illustrates 
well,  when  he  speaks  of  the  ^^  soothing  tendency''^  of  the 
Prayer-book — am  I  not  right  when  I  say,  that,  as  Christians, 
not  only,  but  as  patriots  and  philosophers,  there  are  no  inves- 
tigations more  worthy  of  us — and  do  I  greatly  err  in  the  be- 
lief, that  already,  among  the  thoughtful  and  the  good,  there 
is  a  preparation  to  receive  them  favourably,  and  to  bestow 
on  those  who  lead  the  way  that  best  reward  and  most  dis- 
tinguished honour,  their  confidence  and  acquiescence? 

Chiefly,  however,  to  two  portions  of  the  ever-flowing 
stream  of  history  would  I,  if  the  permission  were  but  given 
me,  direct  the  public  mind — the  history  of  the  Church  in 
the  first  ages,  and  the  history  of  ^Ae  English  Reformation, 
The  Church  of  the  first  ages  were  God's  "  eye  witness- 
es and  ministers  of  the  word."  It  is  a  maxim  of  the  courts, 
'^expositio  contemporanea  est fortissima.'"  The  first  recep- 
tion is  the  best.  As  we  owe  the  integrity  of  the  text  to 
them,  so  are  we  their  debtors  for  the  certainty  of  the  interpre- 
tation. "  The  contradiction  of  tongues,"  saith  Lord  Bacon,! 
"doth  every  where  meet  us,  out  of  the  tabernacle  of  God; 
therefore,  whithersoever  thou  shalt  turn  thyself,  thou  shalt 
find  no  end  of  controversies  except  thou  withdraw  thyself 
into  that  tabernacle."    -"  The  fathers  of  the  Church,"  says 

*  The  Rev.  Professor  Keble,  advertisement  to  the  Christian  Year. 
t  Of  the  Church  and  the  Scriptures,  Basil  Montagu's  edition,  i.220. 


INTRODUCTORY  LETTER.  XV 

Townsend,*  "are  unanimous  on  all  those  points  which  pe- 
culiarly characterise  true  Christianity.  They  assert  the 
divinity,  the  incarnation,  and  the  atonement  of  Christ;  and 
thus  bear  their  decisive  testimony  against  the  modern  rea- 
soners  on  these  points.  They  are  unanimous  in  asserting 
that  the  primitive  Churches  were  governed  by  an  order  of 
men,  who  possessed  authority  over  others  who  had  been  set 
apart  for  preaching  and  administering  the  Sacraments:  and 
certain  privileges  and  powers  were  committed  to  that  high- 
er order  which  were  withheld  from  the  second  and  third. 
The  reception  of  the  canon  of  Scripture,  the  proofs  of  its 
authenticity  and  genuineness,  rest  upon  the  authority  of 
the  fathers;  and  there  are  customs  of  universal  observance, 
which  are  not  in  express  terms  commanded  in  Scripture, 
and  which  rest  upon  the  same  foundation.  We  are  justified, 
therefore,  on  these  and  on  many  other  accounts,  in  main- 
taining the  utmost  veneration  for  their  unanimous  authority, 
which  has  never  in  any  one  instance  clashed  with  Scripture, 
which  will  preserve  in  its  ptirity  e^?ry  Church  which  is  di- 
rected by  them,  and  check  or  extinguish  every  innovation 
which  encourages  error  in  doctrine,  or  licentiousness  in  dis- 
cipline." "  He  that  hath  willingly  subscribed  to  the  word 
of  God,"  says  Bishop  Hall,t  attested  in  the  everlasting 
Scriptures;  to  all  the  primitive  creeds;  to  the  four  general 
councils;  to  the  common  judgment  of  the   fathers,  for  six 

*  The  New  Testament  arranged  in  Chronological  and  Historical  or- 
der, ii.  134. 

t  Concio  ad  Clerum,  Pratt's  edition. 


XVI  INTRODUCTORY  LETTER. 

hundred  years  after  Christ,  (which  we,  of  our  reformation, 
religiously  profess  to  do;)  this  man  may  possibly  err  in 
trifles,  but  he  cannot  be  an  heretic."  This  is  the  doctrine 
of  common  sense  not  less  than  of  the  Church.  It  was  the 
departure  from  it  which  constituted  the  necessity  of  the  En- 
glish Reformation.  It  is  the  departure  from  it  which  con- 
stitutes the  danger  of  our  day.  It  is  in  the  return  to  it,  in 
standing  in  the  ways,  and  asking  for  "  the  old  paths,"  that 
our  safety  and  our  hope  are  to  be  found.  It  is  a  blessed 
omen  for  our  limes,  that,  through  the  zealous  devotion  of  Pu- 
sey  and  Keble  and  Newman,  the  ancient  documents  will 
soon  be  brought,  in  their  translations  of  the  Fathers,  within 
the  common  reach. 

Of  kindred  interest,  and  of  scarcely  inferior  importance, 
is  the  study  of  the  English  Reformation.  For  a  time, 
the  Church,  drunk  with  too  much  prosperity,  had  wandered 
and  grown  wanton.  For  a  time,  God  left  her  to  eat  of  the 
fruit  of  her  own  ways,  and  be  filled  with  her  own  devices. 
But, 

"  His  own  possession  and  his  lot 
He  will  not  quite  forsake." 

The  wrath  of  man  he  makes  to  praise  him.  The  remain- 
der of  it  he  restrains.  When  the  time  came  that  he  would 
have  mercy  upon  Sion,  men  were  not  wanting  to  the  work, 
with  holy  hearts,  and  giant  hands,  and  tongues  of  fire.  They 
took  their  stand  upon  the  pure  word  of  God.  They  ap- 
pealed to  the  consenting  voice  of  all  Christian  antiquity. 
They  toiled.     They  prayed.     They  bled.     They  burned. 


INTRODUCTORY  LETTER.  XVll 

They  persevered.  They  triumphed.  The  Church,  deformed 
before,  was, now  reformed.  She  returned  to  her  old  prm- 
ciples,  and  to  her  "  first  love."  "  We  look,''  says  Joseph 
Mede,*  "  after  the  form,  rites,  and  disciphne  of  antiquity; 
and  endeavour  to  bring  our  own  as  near  as  we  can  to  that 
pattern."  "  If  I  mistake  not  greatly,"  says  Casaubon,  wri- 
ting to  Salmasius,t  "  the  soundest  part  of  all  the  reformation 
is  in  England;  for  there,  with  the  study  of  the  scripture,  there 
is  the  most  regard  to  the  study  of  antiquity." 

But  I  must  check  myself.  1  may  not  enter  now  upon  this 
rich  and  tempting  field.  The  time  would  i^iil  me  to  tell  of 
Wickliff,  and  Cranmer,  and  Ridley,  and  Latimer,  and  Tay- 
lor, and  Rogers,  and  the  glorious  host  of  witnesses  for  God, 
that  "  loved  not  their  life  unto  the  death." 

"  Methinks  that  I  could  trip  o'er  heaviest  soil 
Light  as  a  buoyant  bark  from  wave  to  wave, 
Were  mine  the  trusty  staff*  that  Jewel  gave 
To  youthful  Hooker  in  familiar  style 
The  gift  exalting,  and  with  playful  smile.t 

*  Mede's  Works,  ii.  1061.  t  Epistola,  709. 

t  "  On  foot  they  went,  and  took  Salisbury  in  their  way,  purposely  to 
see  the  good  Bishop,  who  made  Mr.  Hooker  sit  at  his  own  table — ■ 
which  Mr.  Hooker  boasted  of  with  much  joy  and  gratitude,  when  he 
saw  his  mother  and  friends;  and  at  the  Bishop's  parting  with  him, 
the  Bishop  gave  him  good  counsel,  and  his  benediction,  but  forgot  to 
give  him  money;  which  when  the  Bishop  had  considered,  he  sent  a 
servant  in  all  haste  to  call  Richard  back  to  him,  and  at  Richard's  re. 
turn,  the  Bishop  said  to  him,  Richard,  I  sent  for  you  back  to  lend  you  a 
3* 


XVlll  INTRODUCTORY  LETTER. 

For  thus  equipped,  and  bearing  on  his  head 

The  donor's  farewell  blessing,  can  he  dread 

Tempest,  or  length  of  way,  or  weight  of  toil? 

More  sweet  than  odours  caught  by  him  who  sails 

Near  spicy  shores  of  Araby  the  blest; 

A  thousand  times  more  exquisitely  sweet 

The  freight  of  holy  feeling  which  we  meet 

In  thoughtful  moments,  wafted  by  the  gales 

From  fields  where  good  men  walk,  or  bowers  wherein  they  rest. 

Holy  and  heavenly  spirits  as  they  are 

Spotless  in  life,  and  eloquent  as  wise, 

With  what  entire  affection  do  they  prize 

Their  new-born*  Church!     Labouring  with  earnest  care 

To  baffle  all  that  may  her  strength  impair; 

That  Church — the  unperverted  Gospel's  seat; 

In  their  afflictions  a  divine  retreat; 

horse  which  hath  carried  me  many  a  mile,  and,  I  thank  God,  with 
much  ease;  and  presently  delivered  into  his  hand  a  walking  staff,  with 
which  he  professed  he  had  travelled  through  many  parts  of  Germany; 
and  he  said,  Richard,  I  do  not  give  but  lend  you  my  horse;  be  sure  you 
be  honest,  and  bring  my  horse  back  to  me  at  your  return  this  way  to 
Oxford.  And  I  do  now  give  you  ten  groats  to  bear  your  charges  to 
Exeter;  and  here  is  ten  groats  more,  which  I  charge  you  to  deliver  to 
your  mother,  and  tell  her  I  send  her  a  bishop's  benediction  with  it 
and  beg  the  continuance  of  her  prayers  for  me.  And  if  you  bring  my 
horse  back  to  me  I  will  give  you  ten  groats  more  to  carry  you  on  foot 
to  the  college;  and  so,  God  bless  you,  good  Richard." — Izaak  Walton's 
Life  of  Richard  Hooker. 

*  "  New-born;"  not  as  the  Churchy  but  as  the  Catholic  Church  re^ 
formed. 


INTRODUCTORY  LETTER.  XIX 

Source  of  their  liveliest  hope,  and  tenderest  prayer! 

The  truth  exploring  with  an  equal  mind, 

In  doctrine  and  communion  they  have  sought 

Firmly  between  the  two  extremes  to  steer; 

But  theirs  the  wise  man's  ordinary  lot, 

To  trace  right  courses  for  the  stubborn  blind, 

And  prophesy  to  ears  that  will  not  hear. — 

Wordsworth,  Ecclesiastical  Sketches. 

Let  us  hope  that  to  this  most  fruitful  field  of  truth, 
and  purity  and  piety,  and  charity,  Mr.  Blunt's  delightful 
"Sketch"  may  turn  many  an  eager  eye  and  many  a  vigo- 
rous foot.  And  for  ourselves,  dear  brother,  when  the  cares 
and  disappointments  and  disquietudes  of  life  disturb  or 
weary  us,  and  we  are  tempted  to  fall  back,  or  turn  aside, 
or  falter,  on  the  high,  "  right  onward"  course  of  duty,  next 
to  the  Author  of  our  faith,  and  the  bright  cloud  of  prophets 
and  apostles  who  stand  nearest  to  his  throne,  let  us  direct 
our  eyes  to  tlie  illustrious  fathers  of  the  English  Reforma- 
tion. "  We  shall  find  there,"  I  cite  again  the  eloquent  and 
admirable  Rose,*  "  bright  examples  of  saints  and  martyrs 
— of  men  of  whom  the  world  was  not  worthy — who  have 
done  all  and  suffered  all,  that  men  could  do  and  could  sufi'er, 
for  that  one  blessed  cause,  and  in  so  doing  and  so  suffering 
have  found  an  elevation,  a  peace  and  a  joy  which  nothing 
could  give  but  the  sense  of  God's  presence,  and  the  influ- 
ence of  God's  Spirit,  blessing  his  own  servants  in  doing  his 
own  work.      So  warned,  and  so  cheered,  by  the  voice  of 

*  The  Study  of  Church  History  recommended. 


xjC  introductory  letter. 

Scripture  and  the  comment  of  history,  we  shall  betake  us 
each  to  our  humble  path  with  a  clearer  conviction  of  duty, 
a  stronger  sense  of  the  danger  and  the  guilt  of  neglecting  it, 
a  firmer  hope  of  a  blessing,  a  more  cheerful  and  animating 
view  of  the  prospect  before  us." 

And  now,  dear  brother, — who  rejoicest  in  a  name,  than 
which  the  earth  has  never  known  a  nobler,  the  name  of 
"  the  judicious  Hooker," — in  the  hope  that,  for  the  love  you 
bear  me,  you  will  pardon  this  strange  rambling,  and  with 
the  prayer,  that  God  may  bless  you  many  years  with  health 
and  strength,  to  serve  his  glorious  Church,  with  the  rich 
gifts  which  he  has  given  you — or,  failing  these,  may  com- 
fort and  sustain  your  heart  with  Milton's  noble  sentiment, 

"  They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait," — 

believe  me,  with  sincere  afTection,  your  faithful  friend  and 
brother  in  the  Church  and  Gospel  of  our  common  Lord. 

G.  W.  DOANE. 

The  Rev.  Herman  Hooker, 

Editor  of  the  Library  of  Christian  Knowledge^ 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  1. 


British  and  Anglo-Saxon  Churches. — Intercourse  with  Rome. — Early- 
Corruptions  ......      Page  1 

CHAPTER  II. 

Divisions  amongst  Ecclesiastics. — The  regular  and  secular  Clergy. — 
The  Pope  favours  the  former. — Exemptions  from  Episcopal  Juris- 
diction.— Habits  of  the  Friars    ....  23 

CHAPTER  III, 

Progress  of  Grievances  under  the  Norman  Princes. — Papal  Interfe- 
rence.— Legates. — Collision  of  Roman  and  English  Forms  of  Law 
— Inconveniences  attending  it     .  -  -  -  47 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Monasteries. — Their  Usurpation  of  the  Rights  of  the  Clergy. — Impro. 
priations. — Evils  of  the  System  ,  ,  ,  -  60 


XXll  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  V. 

Early  Reformers. — Waldenses. — WicklifFe. — Lollards         -  75 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Luther. — Erasmus. — Sir  T.  More. — New  Translation  of  the  Bible. — 
Demand  for  it      -  -  -  -  -  -  96 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Cranmer. — The  Divorce. — The  Supremacy  -  -  111 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

Dissolution  of  the  Abbeys. — Church  Property. — Immediate  Conse- 
quences of  the  Dissolution  -  -  -  -  135 

CHAPTER    IX. 

Cromwell. — Gardiner. — Bonner. — Tlie  Act  of  the  Six  Articles. — Ser- 
mons of  those  Days. — Proposed  Disposal  of  Ecclesiastical  Pro- 
perty.— Articles  of  1536. — The  Bible  in  Churches. — Bishops'  Book, 
—King's  Book 165 

CHAPTER  X. 

Edward  VI. — Advance  of  the  Reformation. — Erasmus's  Paraphrase. 
— Homilies. — Cranmcr's  Catechism. — Office  of  Communion. — Book 
of  Common-Prayer. — Time  of  Service,  and  Length. — Primer. — Ar- 
ticles of  1553. — Moderation  of  the  English  Reformers     -  196 


CONTENTS.  XXlll 


CHAPTER   XI. 


Hooper. — Puritans. — Expectations  of  the  Roman  Catliolics,— Ed- 
ward's  Death. — Lady  Jane  Grey  -  -  -  235 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Mary. — Suppression  of  the  Reformation. — Persecution  of  the  Reform- 
ers. — Fox's  Acts  and  Monuments  ...  252 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

Elizabeth. — Her  Accession. — Her  Caution. — Reformation  again, tri- 
umphant.— Return  of  the  Exiles. — Jewel. — Injunctions  of  Elizabeth 
compared  with  those  of  Edward. — Progress  of  the  Puritans. — The 
Reformation  not  completed. — Conclusion  -  -  299 


A  SKETCH 


REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND, 


CHAPTER  I. 


BTITISH  AND  ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCHES. INTERCOURSE 

WITH  ROME. EARLY  CORRUPTIONS. 

The  Reformation  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  great  and 
sudden  event  which  took  the  nation  by  surprise.  It  was 
merely  the  crisis  to  which  things  had  been  tending  for 
some  centuries;  and  if  the  fire  did  at  last  run  over  the  coun- 
try with  wonderful  rapidity,  it  was  because  the  trees  were 
all  dry.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  whilst  the  Roman 
catholie  religion  prevailed  all  was  unity.  True  it  is,  that 
the  elements  of  discontent  were  as  yet  working  for  the 
most  part  under  ground,  but  they  were  not  on  that  account 
the  less  likely  to  make  themselves  eventually  felt.  The 
strong  man  armed  was  keeping  the  house,  and  therefore 
his  goods  were  at  peace;  but  he  was  in  jeopardy  long 
before  he  was  spoiled.  Luther  was  the  match  that  pro- 
duced the  explosion,  but  the  train  had  been  laid  by  the  events 
of  generations  before  him. 

It  may  not  then  be  the  least  useful,  nor,  perhaps,  the 
least  interesting  portion  of  a  History  of  the  Reformation 
in  England,  to  trace  some  of  the  causes  that  led  to  it;  some 
3 


26  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

of  the  incidents  that  made  it  practicable,  and  some  of  the 
abuses  that  rendered  it  necessary.  And  here  there  is 
no  need  to  conceal  the  obligations  we  were  under  in 
the  first  instance  to  the  church  of  Rome.  Neither  Gre- 
gory himself,  nor  Augustin  his  messenger,  appears  to  have 
been  influenced  by  any  other  than  a  truly  Christian 
spirit  in  seeking  the  conversion  of  England,  then  no  very 
tempting  prize;  and  though  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Christianity  had  been  introduced  into  this  island  much 
earlier,  whether  by  any  of  the  apostles  themselves;  whether 
after  the  persecution  on  the  death  of  Stephen,  by  some  of 
the  Syrian  Christians,  "  who  were  scattered  abroad,  and 
went  every  where  preaching  the  word;"*  or  whether  by 
devout  soldiers  of  the  same  nation,  whom  the  famine  fore- 
told by  Agabus  might  have  driven  into  the  armies  of 
Claudius,  and  who  might  have  come  with  him  into  Britain;t 
or  whether  by  some  of  the  Jewish  converts  dispersed  over 
the  world,  when  that  same  emperor  "  commanded  all  Jews 
to  depart  from  Rome;":^ — whether  from  these  or  from  other 
sources  unknown  to  us,  England  was  in  some  degree  Chris- 
tianised, the  existence  of  a  British  church  before  the  arri- 
val of  Augustin  in  the  year  597  is  a  fact  clearly  estab- 
lished. Its  independent  origin  is  sufficiently  attested  by 
the  subjects  of  controversy  between  the  Anglo-Roman  and 
British  Christians;  the  time  of  Easter,  in  which  the 
Britons  followed,  as  they  said,  St.  John  and  the  eastern 
Christians,  a  point  of  heterodoxy,  it  may  be  observed,  in 
which  the  Irish  also  concurred,§  whoin  some  other  respects 
accorded  with  the  British  church,  building  their  places  of 
worship,  for  instance,  with  wood,  and  thatching  them  with 
reeds;|l  the  tohsure,  whether  it  should  be  that  of  Peter  or 

*  Acts,  xi.  19.  t  Acts,  xi.  28. 

t  Acts  xviii.  2.  §  Bede's  Hist.  Eccles.  169. 

II  Bede,233. 


CONVERSION  OF  ENGLAND.  27 

Paul,  or  none  whatever;*  the  rhe  of  Baptism,  with  regard 
to  which,  however,  the  nature  of  the  difference  between 
the  churches  does  not  appear,  though  a  difference  there  vvas,t 
and  the  same   may  be  said  of  the  ceUbacy  of  the  clergy. 
The   Britions  had    churches  of  their  own;    built  after  a 
fashion  of  their  own;  their  own  saints;  their  own  hierar- 
chy,— the  British  bishops  attending  a  council  as  such;  and 
holding  no  intercourse  with  the  Angles  even  in  Bede's  time, 
but  looking  on  them  as  Samaritans.^  Moreover,  the  jealousy 
with  which  the  Welsh  long  afterwards  regarded  all  ecclesi- 
astical interference  on  the  part  of  England,  their  resolute 
assertion  of  their  right  to  a  metropolitan  of  their  own  at  St. 
Davids,  and  their  actual  exercise  of  that  right  till  the  time 
of  Henry  I,  argues  the  same  difference  in  the  rock  from 
which  the  English  and    British  churches  were  originally 
hewn.§     Let,  however,  tribute  be  paid  to  whom  tribute  is 
due:  Augustin  was  the  founder  of  the  English  church  as 
distinguished  from  the  British,  for  the  Britons  made  a  con- 
science of  leavmg  the  Pagan  invaders  to  die  in  their  igno- 
rance and  their  sins:  and  it  is  probable  that  both  in  doctrine 
and  discipline  the  religion  of  this  country  owed  to  the  great 
Apostle  of  England  (as  he  has  been  called)  its  revival,  ex- 
tension, and  permanent  establishment.    But  Gregory  was  no 
pope  in  the  more  modern  sense  of  the  word;  it  was  his  de- 
sire that  the  church  of  Rome  should  be  followed  by  the  church 
of  England  when  there  was  reason  for  it,  not  otherwise;  he 
would  have  some  errors  reproved;    some  he  would  have 
tolerated;  some  he  would  not  have  seen,  that  all  might  be 
done  away;  ecclesiastical  property  he  would  have  recovered 
where  it  had  been  plundered;  but  that  more  should  be  ex- 
acted than  had  been  taken  away,  or  that   a  merchandise 

«  Bede,  255.  459.  480.  t  Bede,  437. 

t  Bede,  34.  158. 169. 

§  Girald,  Cambr.  apud  Hen.     Wharton,  v.  ii.  p.  533.  Anglia  Sacra. 


28  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

should  be  made  of  the  loss,  that  was  to  be  far  from  the  church.* 
No  wonder  that  the  Gospel,  mixed  though  it  certainly  was 
even  then  with  some  alloy,  should  have  made  its  way  in 
England,  recommended  by  a  spirit  like  this,  and  that  kings 
should  have  been  found  its  nursing  fathers;!  accordingly  they 
erected  crosses;  built  and  endowed  churches  and  monasteries, 
and  the  fierce  superstitions  of  the  Saxons  made  way  for  the 
rehgion  of  Jesus.  But  the  mystery  of  iniquity  had  begun  to 
work  even  in  Bede's  time4  His  portrait  of  Aidanus  or  Madoc, 
a  missionary  from  Ikolmkill  to  the  Angles  near  a  century  be- 
fore, is  clearly  meant  to  contrast  with  the  ecclesiastics  of  his 
own  day.  He  might  have  been  the  prototype  of  Chaucer's 
"  poore  parson  of  a  towne."  He  was  chaste;  he  lived  as 
he  taught  others  to  live;  he  travelled  through  the  villages 
teaching  the  word,  not  on  horseback,  but  on  foot.  Those 
whom  he  met,  if  believers,  he  confirmed  in  the  faith;  if  un- 
believers, he  initiated  in  it;  unlike  the  idlers  of  these  times 
(says  Bede),  all  who  were  in  his  company,  whether 
priests  or  people,  were  busied  in  reading  the  Scriptures,  or 
learning  the  Psalms  by  rote.  There  was  a  stirring  amongst 
the  dry  bones  through  his  exertions;  the  people  flocked  to 
hear  the  word  of  God;  churches  were  built  in  many  places, 
and  monasteries  were  enriched  by  the  bounty  of  the  king. 
Such  is  the  picture  drawn  by  Bede,  coloured  perhaps  some- 
what too  highly;  for  it  seems  unlikely  that  such  effects,  to 
their  full  extent,  should  have  been  produced  by  a  teacher 
who  spoke  the  language  of  his  hearers  but  imperfectly,  and 
had  occasional  need  of  an  interpreter. §  Much,  however, 
might  have  been  done,  in  a  popular  cause,  even  in  spite  of 
such  an  obstacle.  Giraldus  tells  us  that  when  he  preached 
the  crusades  to  the  Welshmen  at  Haverford  West,  he  could 
gain  200  recruits  at  a  sermon  in  Fj-fench  or  Latin,  of  which 

*  Bede  82.  et  seq.  f  Bede,  116. 

X  Bede  died  A.  D.  735.  §  Bede,  166. 


EARLY  MISSIONARIES.  '  29 

the  people  did  not  understand  one  word,  though  they 
knew  and  approved  its  object.*  Still  in  a  sketch  which 
Bede  gives  us  of  the  state  of  a  convent  (consisting  as  was 
not  uncommon  both  of  monks  and  nuns),  at  a  period  not 
much  later  than  Madoc,  there  is  a  sad  falling  off.  The  case 
is  indeed  spoken  of  as  a  flagrant  one,  and  the  facts  are  to 
be  gathered  out  of  a  fabulous  story  of  a  warning  sent  by  an 
angel  to  a  monk  of  that  house;  signifying  that  a  judgment 
was  coming  upon  it;  for  that  of  its  inmates  none  (save  one 
only)  were  occupied  with  the  good  of  their  souls;  all  were 
asleep,  or  only  awake  to  sin,  both  men  and  women;  the 
cells  intended  for  study  and  prayer  had  been  converted  into 
chambers  of  revelry  and  excess;  the  virgins  who  had  dedi- 
cated themselves  to  God,  having  no  respect  unto  their  vows, 
employed  all  their  leisure  hours  in  adorning  their  persons,  as 
though  they  were  brides,  or  wished  to  be.t  Indeed,  on 
one  occasion  about  the  same  time,  when  a  panic  prevailed 
through  the  country  by  reason  of  the  plague,  it  was  actually 
attempted  in  one  quarter  of  the  island  where  Christianity 
had  been  received,  to  repair  the  temples  and  restore  idola- 
try.J  Whatever,  therefore,  the  wheat  might  be  that  had 
been  sown  by  Augustin  and  his  companions,  the  tares,  it 
seems,  were  growing  about  it  apace,  and  were  ready  to 
choke  it.  The  truth,  however,  appears  to  be,  that  as  yet 
there  was  no  well-organised  church  in  England.  There 
was  wanted  a  system  in  matters  ecclesiastical,  what  was 
done  was  done  chiefly  by  good  and  zealous  individuals. 
Rome  might  have  supplied  the  defect;  but,  the  relation  in 
which  England  stood  to  Rome  is  not  easily  determined  from 
the  history  of  Bede;  it  was  probably  ill  defined,  fluctuating, 
and  uncertain,  depending  in  a  great  measure  upon  the  acci- 

»  Angl.  Sacra,  v.  ii.  p.  491.  t  Bede,  339. 

t  Bede,  250. 


dU  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

dent  of  the  day.  Pope  Gregory  is  indeed  represented  as 
speaking  with  some  authority  in  the  answers  which  he  re- 
turns to  Augustin,  who  consults  him  on  the  regulations  of 
the  infant  church; — he  may  furnish  him  with  sacred  ves- 
sels, ornaments,  robes,  relics,  books,  and  give  him  power  to 
consecrate  Bishops  in  Britain,  and  directions  for  using  it. 
Reference  may  be  made  to  the  pope  from  time  to  time,  in 
any  crisis  of  difficulty,  or  doubt,  or  hardship;  wholesome 
decrees  with  regard  to  the  method  of  filling  up  the  sees  in 
case  of  death  may  be  received  from  him;  his  influence  may 
be  asked  to  protect  the  liberties  of  a  religious  house;  but 
distance  and  the  turbulence  of  the  times  rendered  the  inter- 
course difficult,  and  subjected  it  to  much  interruption. 
Rome  was  in  those  days  pestilential;*  the  Alps  were  formi- 
dable, often  fatal  to  travellers;  the  seas  were  full  of  danger 
in  the  actual  state  of  navigation;  it  was  a  weary  way  from 
Calais  to  Marseilles  (one  of  the  usual  routes),  and  if  the  po- 
litical aspect  of  things  rendered  a  mayor  of  the  palace  sus- 
picious, it  might  be  worse  than  a  weary  way; — a  journey  to 
Rome  for  the  sake  of  gaining  religious  knowledge  was 
reckoned  in  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century  a  labour  of 
uncommon  merit.t  The  church  of  England,  therefore,  was 
left  a  while  pretty  much  to  itself;  and  though  great  good 
came  of  this,  it  was  not  without  its  mixture  of  evil.  On 
the  one  hand,  the  liberties  of  the  rising  church  were  fos- 
tered by  this  non-intercourse  with  Rome;  it  threw  the  na- 
tion very  much  upon  its  own  resources,  and  gave  to  the 
king,  and  above  all,  to  synods  of  the  clergy,  an  authority  in 
ecclesiastical  affairs,  to  which  they  might  not  otherwise 
have  attained.  Perhaps,  too,  it  cultivated  a  better  under- 
standing between  the  princes  and  prelates,  who  seem  to 
have  gone  hand  in  in  hand  these  early  times;   the  former 

*  Bede,  254.  t  Bede,  322. 


INTERCOURSE  WITH  ROME.  31 

inviting,  welcoming,  and  establishing,  by  grants  of  land 
for  ever,  the  residence  of  these  Christian  pastors  amono-st 
their  own  people — a  measure  of  which  they  might  not  have 
thought  the  advantages  so  obvious,  had  they  thereby  sub- 
jected themselves  and  their  conduct  to  the  perpetual  ani- 
madversion of  a  third  party  at  Rome;  for  it  is  curious  to 
observe  that,  within  200  years  after  the  foundation  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  church,  Aldfrid,  a  king  of  Northumbria,  feels 
himself  called  upon  to  resist  the  interference  of  the  pope 
in  a  case  of  appeal,  and  actually  refuses  to  listen  to  his 
recommendation.  On  the  other  hand,  a  want  of  combi- 
nation and  co-operation  (a  defect  so  injurious  to  every 
great  undertaking,  and  not  the  least  so  to  the  successful 
preaching  of  the  word  of  God,)  made  itself  sensibly 
felt  in  the  religious  establishment  of  England.  Canons 
seem  to  have  been  published,  but  not  to  have  been  rigid- 
ly observed.  The  order  of  episcopal  succession  appears 
to  have  proceeded  upon  no  very  settled  or  intelligi- 
ble plan;  not  that  it  was  vitiated  by  any  incompetency  of 
the  parties  to  administer  the  rite;  but  that  the  exercise  of 
the  episcopal  office  was  desultory — a  synod,  or  an  indivi- 
dual, or  a  king  soHciting  it,  a  native  bishop,  or  a  for- 
eigner, as  it  might  happen,  conferring  it; — so  that,  shortly 
before  Bede's  time,t  there  was  only  one  canonical  bishop 
throughout  all  England.  All  this  worked  confusion  in  the 
church;  it  impaired  its  efficiency;  it  gave  the  ancient  pre- 
judices of  Paganism,  and  other  causes  of  corruption,  time 
to  rally,  and  to  debase  the  Gospel,  if  they  could  not  destroy 
it.  Accordingly  Oswi,  king  of  Northumbria,  and  Ecbert, 
king  of  Kent,  thought  it  high  time  to  bestir  themselves 
They  consulted  together  on  the  actual  condition  of  the 
church,  and  came  to  a  determination,  in  which  the  church 

*  Bede,  446.  t  Bede,  247. 


32  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

itself  concurred,  to  send  a  priest  of  their  common  choosing 
to  Rome,  to  be  there  consecrated  archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
who  might  thenceforth  supply  the  sees  of  England  canoni- 
cally,  and  set  in  order  its  ecclesiastical  rites.  The  office, 
however,  of  reforming  the  Anglo-Saxon  church  was  not  de- 
stined to  the  man  of  their  choice — he,  and  all  his,  died,  pro- 
bably of  the  malaria;  and  Theodore,  a  monk  "  of  Tarsus,  a 
city  of  Cilicia,"  was  finally  fixed  upon  by  the  pope,  conse- 
crated archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  despatched  to  Eng- 
land. He  seems  to  have  been  one  of  those  persons  whose 
spirit  and  talents  give  a  character  to  tlie  times  in  which  they 
live.  He  made  a  visitation  of  all  England,  correcting  abu- 
ses, establishing  discipline,  ordaining  bishops,  re-ordaining 
those  whose  commission  was  irregular,  introducing  music 
generally  into  the  churches,  the  use  of  it  having  been  as  yet 
confined  to  Kent,  and  encouraging  the  study  of  Greek  and 
Latin,  of  which  the  effects  were  felt  in  the  days  of  Bede. 
Thus  did  he  reduce  to  order  a  very  disorderly  state  of  things; 
and,  in  spite  of  the  various  independent  kingdoms  into 
which  the  island  was  divided,  and  by  which  misrule  had 
been  perpetuated,  was  an  archbishop  (and  he  was  the  first) 
to  whom  the  universal  church  of  England  submitted.*  That 
he  might  consolidate  his  acts,  and  render  the  unity  of  his 
church  lasting,  he  convoked  a  synod  of  the  bishops  and 
clergy  at  Heorutford  (Hereford  t)  about  the  year  673,  and 
proposed  for  their  adoption  several  canons,  which,  as  they 
throw  considerable  light  on  the  state  of  ecclesiastical  affairs 
at  that  period,  are  here  inserted: — ] .  That  all  persons  should 
keep  Easter  in  common,  on  the  Sunday  after  the  full  moon 
after  the  vernal  equinox.  2.  That  no  bishop  should  in- 
terfere with  the  diocese  of  another,  but  be  content  with  gov- 
erning his  own.     3.  That  no  bisliop  should  be  at  liberty  to 

*  Bede,  258.  t  Bede,  271. 


EARLY  CANONS.  33 

disturb  a  religious  house  in  any  wise,  nor  to  take  from  it 
any  portion  of  its  property  by  force.  4.  That  monks  should 
not  migrate  from  one  monastery  to  another  without  the  cer- 
tificate of  their  own  abbot,  but  should  continue  under  the 
rule  to  which  they  at  first  professed  obedience.  5.  That  the 
clergy  should  not  withdraw  themselves  from  their  own  pro- 
per bishop  to  wander  about  at  large;  nor  should  be  received 
elsewhere  unless  provided  with  letters  commendatory  from 
that  bishop,  under  pain  of  excommunication.  6.  That  bish- 
ops and  clergy,  who  are  strangers,  should  be  treated  hospi- 
tably, and  be  therewith  content  abstaining  from  the  exercise 
of  their  office,  unless  permitted  by  the  bishop  of  the  dio- 
cese, in  which  they  are  staying  to  do  otherwise.  7.  That 
a  synod  should  be  held  twice  a  year;  on  which,  however, 
an  amendment  was  moved  and  carried,  that  it  should  be  once 
a  year  only,  and  on  the  first  of  August.  8.  That  the  bish- 
ops should  take  precedence  according  to  thepriority  of  their 
consecration.  9.  That  the  number  of  bishops,  in  conside- 
ration of  the  multitudes  added  to  the  church,  should  be  aug- 
mented: and,  lastly,  that  license  should  be  allowed  to  no 
man  to  contract  an  unlawful  or  incestuous  marriage;  that  no 
man  should  put  away  his  wife,  but  as  the  Gospel  permits — 
for  the  cause  of  fornication;  and  that  whoso  should  put  away 
his  wife  should  never  be  joined  to  another,  if  he  would  not 
forfeit  the  name  of  Christian;  but  either  remain  single  or  be 
reconciled  to  the  same.  From  these  provisions  it  may  be 
conjectured  what  were  the  prevailing  defects  of  the  church 
establishment  in  the  seventh  century;  and  it  is  not  difficult 
to  see  in  them;  though  as  yet  undeveloped,  several  of  the 
evils  which  were  destined  to  call  for  a  reformation  eight 
centuries  later.  On  the  whole,  the  Anglo-Saxon  church 
was  now  more  perfectly  modelled  upon  the  Roman  than 
it  had  yet  been;  and,  accordingly,  some  years  afterwards, 
a  certain  king  of  the  Picts,  Naiton  by  name,  sent  to  Eng- 


34  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

land  for  instructions  on  church  architecture,  and  the 
riglit  observance  of  Easter,  having  heard  (as  he  said)  that 
the  English  had  conformed  to  the  example  of  the  holy- 
apostolical  church  of  Rome.*  As  years  roll  on  the  inter- 
course between  this  country  and  Italy  increases!; — ^  pilgri- 
mage to  Rome,  which,  in  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century, 
was  unusualj,  at  the  close  of  it  was  common  enough.  Thus 
Ceadwalla,  king  of  the  West  Saxons,  abdicated,  and  re- 
paired to  Rome  for  baptism;  took  the  name  of  Peter;  died, 
and  was  buried  in  the  church  of  that  apostle.  His  successor, 
Ine,  commending,  in  like  manner,  his  kingdom  to  the  care 
of  younger  men,  after  a  reign  of  thirty-seven  years,  repaired 
to  the  threshold  of  the  blessed  apostles,  desiring  to  sojourn 
for  a  season  upon  that  holy  ground  whilst  on  earth,  that  he 
might  thereby  secure  to  himself  a  more  friendly  reception 
among  the  saints  in  heaven.  Coenred,  king  of  the  Mercians, 
and  Offa,  heir-apparent  of  the  kingdom  of  the  East  Saxons, 
pursued  the  same  course;  which,  indeed,  was  now  adopted 
both  by  noble  and  ignoble  priests  and  people,  men  and  wo- 
men, with  the  utmost  emulation. § 

Rome,  however,  had  by  this  time,  corrupted  the  simpli- 
city of  the  faith,  as  it  was  taught  there  by  St.  Paul  in  his 
own  hired  house;  and  whilst,  no  doubt,  the  English  pilgrims 
who  returned  brought  away  with  them  much  to  civilise  and 
something  to  edify,  they  brought  away  with  them,  too,  much 
to  corrupt  the  church  at  home.  For  Rome  was  under  a  temp- 
tation to  mingle  sacred  and  profane  together;  it  did  not,  like 
Constantinople,  rise  at  once  a  Christian  capital.  The  Gos- 
pel was  introduced  into  it,  and  had  to  win  its  way  by  slow 
degrees  through  the  ancient  sympathies  and  inveterate  ha- 
bits of  the  Pagan  city.  It  was  a  maxim  with  some  of  the 
early  promoters  of  the  Christian  cause  to  do  as  litde  violence 

*Bede,  453.  tBede,271. 

tBede,  322..  §  Bede,  395.  438. 


ROMISH  CORRUPTIONS.  35 

as  possible  to  existing  prejudices.  They  would  run  the 
risk  of  Barnabas  being  confounded  with  Jupiter,  and  Paul 
with  Mercurius.  In  the  transition  from  Pagan  to  Papal 
Rome  much  of  the  old  material  was  worked  up.  The 
heathen  temples  became  Christian  churches;  the  altars  of 
the  gods,  altars  of  the  saints;  the  curtains,  incense,  tapers, 
votive  tablets,  remained  the  same;  the  aquaminarium  was 
still  the  vessel  for  holy  water;  St.  Peter  stood  at  the 
gate  instead  of  Cardea;  St.  Rocque  or  St.  Sebastian  in  the 
bed-room,  instead  of  the  "  Phrygian  Penates;"  St.  Nicholas 
was  the  sign  of  the  vessel,  instead  of  Castor  and  Pollux; 
the  Mater  Deum  became  the  Madonna;  alms  pro  Matre 
Deum  became  alms  for  the  Madonna;  the  festival  of  the 
Mater  Deum,  the  festival  of  the  Madonna,  or  Lady  Day; 
the  Hostia,  or  victim,  was  now  the  host;  the  "  Lugentes 
Campi,"  or  dismal  regions.  Purgatory;*  the  offerings  to 
the  Manes  were  masses  for  the  dead.  The  parallel  might 
be  drawn  out  to  a  far  greater  extent;  indeed,  so  much  of  the 
Roman  had  been  grafted  upon  the  Roman  catholic  system 
during  the  dark  ages  (as  they  are  called)  that  the  confusion 
of  ideas  and  of  terms  resulting  from  it  forms  quite  a  feature 
in  the  writings  of  the  Italian  authors  who  lived  at  the  re- 
vival of  letters.  Images,  holy  and  unholy,  are  by  them 
crowded  together  without  the  smallest  regard  to  decency, 
though  evidently  without  any  intention  to  offend  against 
it  in  the  parties  themselves.  Such  was  the  process  of  de- 
terioration which  the  Gospel  was  undergoing  at  Rome  (pro- 
gressive because  profitable)  at  the  time  "when  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  ancestors  were  improving  their  acquaintance  with 
that  city  by  repairing  to  it  for  purposes  of  devotion. 

*  The  very  name,  purgatory,  is  heathen.  The  annual  feast  of  puri- 
fication in  February  was  called  "  Sacrum  Purgatorium."  Vide  Au- 
gustin.  de  Civ.  Dei,  1.  vii.  c.  7.;  also  Jewel's  Def.  of  the  Apology,  part 
ii.  c.  16.6  1. 


36  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

What  were  the  doctrhies  and  practices  which  at  present 
prevailed  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  church,  and  how  far  it  was 
exempt  from  the  errors  of  later  times,  it  is  not  easy  to  de- 
termine; more  especially  as  the  ecclesiastical  history  of  Bede, 
and  the  early  Saxon  homilies  and  canons,  quoted  by  his 
commentators,  would  often  lead  us  to  conflicting  con- 
clusions:— 

I.  With  regard  to  the  doctrine  of  transubstcmtiation,  we 
read  in  Bede  of  the  "  bread  of  life,"  "  the  holy  bread;"*  of 
a  man  dying  without  the  "  viaticum  salutis;"tj  of  another, 
inquiring,  when  at  the  point  of  death,  of  his  attendant  in 
a  monastery,  whether  they  had  the  *'  eucharist  in  the 
house?"J  and  though,  on  one  occasion,  the  mass  is  spoken 
of  as  a  sacrifice  (mysterii  immolatio)^,  yet  it  may  be  con- 
tended that  the  term  is  Gregory's  own  (for  it  occurs  in  the 
answer  returned  by  him  to  Augustin's  queries),  and  that  it 
cannot  be  fairly  ascribed  to  the  venerable  historian  himself. 
Meanwhile  a  canon,  said  to  be  of  the  age  of  archbishop 
Theodore,  (and  if  so,  more  ancient  than  the  history,  and 
though  written  in  Latin,  accompanied  by  a  Saxon  translation, 
which,  at  any  rate,  pleads  some  antiquity  in  its  favour,) 
argues  the  body  of  Christ  to  be  present  in  the  elements, 
not  substantially,  but  spiritually;  adding,  that  this  mode  is 
recognised  by  St.  Paul,  who  speaks  of  the  Israelites  as 
"  eating  all  of  the  same  spiritual  meat,  and  drinking  of  that 
spiritual  rock  which  followed  them,  and  that  rock  was 
Christ."ll 

II.  On  the  subject  of  image  ivorship,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
church  does  not  seem  to  have  been  altogether  blameless. 
In  the  preface  to  the    Laws  of  Alfred,  though  the  other 

*  Bede,  122.  t  Bede,  431. 

I  Bede,  330.  §  Bede,  94. 

II  Bede,  334.  ed.  Wheloc. 


ANGLO-SAXON  CHURCH.  37 

commandments  are  enumerated  in  their  order,  the  second 
is  omitted,  only  there  is  added  after  the  rest. — "  Thou  shalt 
not  make  gods  of  silver  or  gold."  There  must  have  been 
a  reason  for  such  a  change  in  the  positive  terms  and  relative 
position  of  this  law;  and  it  is  difficult  to  assign  any  reason 
but  one.* 

III.    Purgatory  was   a  part  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  creed. 
This,  indeed,  was  established  on  autliority.     Drithelme,  a 
famous  saint  (as  he  proved)  of  Northumbria,  died  and  was 
buried;  but  he  was  born  to  refute  the  apophthegm  that  dead 
men  tell  no  tales,  for  he  returned  to  life,  and  gave  an  ac- 
count of  his  travels.!     He  had  been  conducted  by  an  angel 
in  white  raiment  towards  the  sunrising  to  a  valley  of  vast 
depth  and  interminable  extent;  the  one  side  of  it  glowing 
with  fire,  the  other  pelted  by  fierce  and  incessant  storms  of 
snow  and  hail.     Between  these  two  conflicting  elements  he 
beheld  the  souls  of  miserable  mortals  bandied  to  and  fro, 
anxious  to  escape  from  the  intolerable  anguish  of  the  mo- 
ment, and  thus  perpetually  leaping  from  side  to  side  in  this 
unhappy  valley.     Such  was  Purgatory.     But  though  Dri-. 
thelme    made    these    matters  known  to  one  Haemgils,  an 
Irishman,  and  through  Haemgils  they  were  communicated 
to  Bede,  the  doctrine  does  not  appear  to  have  been  univer- 
sally held  in  the  Saxon  church,  or,  at  least,  to  have  held  a 
very  prominent  place  in  its  articles  of  faith.     Certain  it  is, 
that  in  some  Anglo-Saxon  sermons  and  confessions  yet  ex- 
tant, no  mention  is  made  of  it,  where  mention  of  it  might 
be  expected. :|:     Still,  the  doctrine  was  clearly  abroad;  and 
in  the  form  it  had  assumed  the  Platonic  purgatory  was  im- 
proved upon,  and  the  poets,  from  Caedmon  §  downwards, 

*■  Prasfat.  in  Leges  Aluredi  Regis,  p.  16.  ed.  Wheloc. 
t  Bcde,  411. 

\  Bede,  ed.  Wheloc,  p.  422.  et  seq. 
§  Turner's  Ang.  ^ax.  iii.  362. 
4 


38  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

availed  themselves  of  these  fearful  images,  conjured  up  by 
the  morbid  imagination  of  the  early  monks,  and  consigned, 
in  their  turn, 

*•  the  delighted  spirit 


To  bathe  m  fiery  floods,  or  to  reside 

In  thrilling  regions  of  thick-ribbed  ice."* 

IV.  Purgatory,  of  course,  brought  other  doctrines  in  its 
train — penance  for  the  living,  that  they  might  never  come 
into  it;t  confession,  that  penance  might  be  enjoined  and  ad- 
justed;:}: masses  for  the  dead,  that  they  might  be  delivered 
from  it.§  These  acts  were  not,  perhaps,  for  a  while,  con- 
sidered obligatory.  The  abuses  of  the  Roman  catholic 
church  did  not  come  of  observation,  but  crept  into  the  world 
by  stealth,  till,  having  at  length  established  themselves  de 

facto,  they  were  confirmed  by  the  decrees  of  some  general 
council,  and  thenceforth  became  dejure  a  part  and  parcel 
of  the  catholic  creed.  Thus  the  use  of  images  by  degrees 
prevailed,  till  it  was  eventually  authorised  by  a  decree  of  a 
council  at  Nice  in  the  year  787.  The  doctrine  of  transub- 
stantiation  gained  a  footing  in  credulous  times,  and  was  en- 
couraged from  interested  motives,  (for  who  should  set 
bounds  to  the  authority  of  a  priest  who  had  power  to  pro- 
duce the  Deity  himself  at  his  bidding?)||  till.it  was  pro- 
nounced orthodox  at  the  council  of  Placentia  in  1095.  The 
communion,  in  one  kind  only,  had  become  customary  (from 
whatever  cause,)  and  the  practice  received  the  placet  of  the 
church  in  1415,  at  the  council  of  Constance. 

V.  The  Virgin  appears  to  have  been  held  in  great,  per- 

*  Measure  for  Measure,  act  iii.  sc.  1. 

t  Bede,  430.  t  Bede.  336.  344.  349.  417. 

§  Bede,  164.  315.  431. 

II  This  argument  is  actually  urged  in  favour  of  the  dignity  of  the 
priesthood  in  the  Catechismus  ad  Parochos,  p.  2X0. 


DOCTRINES.  39 

haps  in  idolatrous,  honour  by  the  Anglo-Saxon  church.  It 
Ts  true  that — 

The  cross  preceding  Him  who  floats  in  air, 
The  pictured  Saviour! 

was  to  be  seen  in  the  processions  of  Augustin,  and  not  the 
Virgm;*  and  in  general  her  name  but  seldom  occurs  in  the 
Ecclesiastical  History  of  Bede;  still  even  here  some  shadow 
of  the  glories  that  were  coming  upon  her  advance  to  meet 
us.  Eadbald  the  son  of  Ethelbert,  Augustin's  friend,  is  said  to 
have  founded  a  church  after  his  extraordinary  conversion 
(for  he  had  not  in  early  life  walked  in  the  ways  of  his 
father)  to  "  the  Holy  Mother  of  God;"t  and  Bishop  Wil- 
frid is  declared  by  an  angel  (so  the  legend  runs)  to  have 
been  delivered  from  death  by  our  Lord,  at  the  prayers  and 
tears  of  the  Bishop's  disciples  and  brethren,  and  "  the  in- 
tercession of  his  own  blessed  virgin-mother  Mary. "J 

VI.  But,  indeed,  the  office  of  intercession  was  not  con- 
fined to  the  Virgin. §  The  Saxon  saints  were  powerful 
both  in  heaven  and  earth;  nothing  was  too  great  or  too 
mean  for  their  interference.  They  could  recover  a  man 
from  the  brink  of  the  grave,  or  cure  a  horse  of  the  colic.|| 
They  could  clear  an  island  of  evil  spirits,  though  it  had  been 
over-run  with  them  like  a  warren;  and  fill  it  with  springs 
of  water  though  it  had  been  dry  and  desolate.^  They 
could  mend  a  fractured  skull,  and  tell  whether  the  party  had 
been  baptised  imperfectly,  ineffectually,  or  not  at  all,  by  the 

*  Bede,  78. 

t  Bede,  124.     This   phrase,  however,  might  only  indicate  the  side 
Eadbald  would  have  supported  in  the  Nestor ian  controversy. 
t  Bede,  446.  §  Bede,  281. 

I!  Bede,  185,  186.  IT  Bede,  351. 


40  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

rate  of  the  recovery.*  A  hair  of  their  heads  could  cure  a 
wen.t  They  could  disperse  an  abscess  on  the  arm  (without 
recourse  to  surgery,)  though  large  as  a  man's  two  hands, 
and  though  it  should  have  been  occasioned  by  bleeding 
when  the  moon  was  four  days'  old,  which  (it  seems)  was 
an  act  of  increchble  folly .±  Nor  was  this  all;  they  could 
unfold  the  secrets  of  the  grave  with  the  utmost  minuteness 
One  could  tell  ot  his  encounter  with  the  soul  of  a  sinner  in 
the  other  world,  which  was  flung  at  him  red-hot  and  burnt 
his  shoulder  and  cheek,  though  when  relatingjiis  adventure, 
even  if  it  were  in  the  depth  of  winter,  and  however  light 
might  be  his  dress,  the  saint  would  sweat  as  if  it  were  the 
dog-days. §  Another  could  speak  of  a  journey,  under  the 
safe  conduct  of  a  guardian  angel  to  the  same  mysterious 
region;  of  his  approach  to  the  brink  of  the  bottomless  pit, 
through  an  atuiosphere  of  insufferable  stench  and  darkness; 
of  the  balls  of  fire  which  were  shot  upwards  out  of  the 
abyss  and  fell  into  it  again,  scintillating  with  the  spirits  of 
the  damned;  of  the  sudden  disappearance  of  his  heavenly 
guide;  of  his  hearing  behind  him  in  this  joyless  solitude 
the  hollow  shrieks  of  dead  men's  souls,  as  they  were  led 
to  the  the  pit's  mouth,  mixed  with  the  loud  and  jubilant 
laughter  of  the  fiends  who  conducted  them;  of  their  plunge 
into  the  burning  bottomless  gulf;  of  the  dolorous  moanings 
and  peals  of  merriment  dying  away  as  they  went  down 
into  the  deep  together;  of  the  legion  of  hideous  forms  which 
now  encompassed  him  about  threatening  to  seize  him  with 
their  fiery  pincers,  but  having  no  power  over  him  to  hurt 
him;  of  his  casting  around  a  wistful  eye  to  see  if  t|iere 
were  any  to  help  him;  and  of  his  discovering  in  the  dis- 
tance, as  it  twinkled  through  the  darkness,  the  light,  as  it 

*  Bede,  389.  .  t  Bede,  366. 

X  Bede,  374.  §  Bede,  213. 


MATERIALS  OF  POETRY.  41 

were,  of  a  star;  of  its  rapid  approach  and  gradual  develop- 
ment, till  the  guardian  angel  again  stands  confessed  before 
him;  the  devils  retire;  and  he  is  rewarded  for  his  alarm  by 
a  translation  to  the  harmonious  sounds,  the  Sabean  odours, 
the  pure  and  placid  beams  of  Paradise.* 

Whilst,  however,  we  gather  these  exploits  of  the  early 
saints  of  our  country  from  the  pages  of  Bede,  it  is  only 
just  to  the  memory  of  that  veracious  and  single-hearted 
writer  to  observe,  that  numerous  as  may  be  the  lying  won- 
ders which  he  relates  and  believes  on  the  testimony  of  others 
of  his  own  actual  knowledge  he  does  not  pretend  to  one. 
But  wherefore  are  they  touched  upon  at  all?  Simply  be- 
cause they  are  characteristic  of  the  times  whereof  they  are 
told:  they  supply  a  gauge  by  which  we  can  measure  the  degree 
and  the  progress  of  those  corruptions  from  which  the  Refor- 
mation finally  delivered  us.  Monstrous  as  these  legends  are, 
they  were  the  faith  of  the  nation;  for  if  Bede  receives  them  as 
facts,  were  his  countrymen  in  general,  so  much  less  enlight- 
ened than  himself,  likely  to  reject  them  as  fictions?  More- 
over, they  are  curious  as  specimens  of  a  vast  magazine  of 
materials,  which  supplied  poetry  when  it  revived  after  the 
barbarous  ages  with  much  of  its  wild  as  well  as  ludicrous 
imagery.  Dante  worked  them  up  into  his  Divina  Comedia. 
His  Inferno,  especially,  is  the  offspring  of  an  imagination 
that  had  dieted  with  these  monkish  mysteries;  and  it  may  be 
observed  by  the  way,  that  even  our  own  Paradise  Lost  may 
have  felt  their  influence,  and  that  Milton  may  be  indirectly 
indebted  for  many  of  the  dark  and  terrible  features  of  this 
hell  to  early  hagiography.  Romance,  if  it  did  not  owe  its 
existence,  owed  much  of  its  furniture  to  the  same  common 
stock.  The  poets  of  romance  drew  from  it,  either  directly 
or  through  the  chroniclers,  the  adventures  that  suited  them^ 

*  Bede,  p.  441.  et  seq.    Comp.  Dante  Purgator.  ii.. 

4* 


42  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Turpin,  a  fictitious  archbishop,  is  constantly  introduced  by 
them  with  solemn  sneers,  as  a  voucher  for  the  most  extrava- 
gant feats  of  their  favourites,  and  thus  the  dishonest  fictions  of 
the  priesthood  were  made  eventually  to  recoil  upon  their  own 
order,  and  swell  the  cry  for  reformation;  for  these  popular 
writers,  without,  perhaps,  intending  it,  or  caring  much  about 
the  matter,  did,  undoubtedly,  lend  a  helping  hand  to  the 
great  cause  by  laughing  at  much  that  was  fairly  ridiculous 
in  the  doctors  and  doctrines  of  their  day;  happy  had  they 
known  where  to  stop,  and  not  to  rush  upon  things  truly 
sacred  with  the  temerity  of  fools.' 

But  one  conservative  principle  there  was  in  the  economy 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  church  that  opposed  itself  to  still  furthe^ 
corruption  of  the  faith  of  Christ,  and  that  was,  the  free  use 
of  the  word  of  God.  The  Scriptures  might  not,  indeed,  be 
very  generally  read;  Bede  complains  that  they  were  not; 
but  there  was  no  hinderance  thrown  in  the  way  of  reading 
them,  quite  the  contrary:  he  himself  gave  a  translation  of  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John;  one  of  the  Psalter  had  appeared  already; 
and  in  the  interval  that  elapsed  before  the  Norman  conquest, 
other  portions  of  Holy  Writ  were  put  forth  from  time  to 
time  in  the  same  vernacular  language.  Virtue,  no  doubt, 
went  out  of  these,  narrow  as  might  be  the  limits  within  which 
they  circulated;  and  it  is  no  unusual  matter  to  find  in  the 
pages  of  Bede,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  legends,  relics,  vis- 
ions, and  superstitions,  of  which  they  are  full,  occasional 
glimpses  of  better  things,  and  some  of  the  cardinal  doctrines 
of  Christianity  still  struggling  vigorously  for  their  lives.* 

*  See  pp.  206. 329. 


43 


CHAPTER  II. 

DIVISIONS  AMONGST  ECCLESIASTICS. THE  REGULAR  AND  SE- 
CULAR CLERGY. THE  POPE  FAVOURS  THE  FORMER. EX- 
EMPTIONS FROM  EPISCOPAL  JURISDICTION. HABITS  OF  THE 

FRIARS. 

In  tracing  the  progress  of  corruption  in  the  English 
church  and  the  causes  of  it,  we  have  hitherto  had  a  trust- 
worthy guide  in  the  venerable  Bede;  henceforward,  to  the 
time  of  the  Normans,  there  is  much  in  our  history  that  is 
dark,  intricate,  and  uncertain.*  Many  early  church-records 
have  perished  in  the  fires  which  on  different  occasions  have 
consumed  our  cathedrals; — such  was  the  fate  of  the  docu- 
ments in  the  cathedral  of  Canterbury  (of  all  others  the 
most  to  be  desired),  which  were  burnt  together  with  that 
primitive  structure  soon  after  the  Norman  conquest.t  A  si- 
milar loss,  and  probably  one  much  greater  in  extent,  was 
sustained  through  the  great  fire  of  London,  when  St.  Paul's, 
with  its  chapter  house  and  the  writings  contained  in  it,  fell 
a  prey  to  the  flames;:}:  not  to  speak  of  the  wholesale  destruction 
or  dispersion  of  books  and  papers  which  accompanied  the 
suppression  of  the  religious  houses,  and  which  left  to  the  fell 
swoop  of  the  puritans  but  little  to  do  in  order  to  extinguish 
much  of  the  ancient  ecclesiastical  annals  of  England. 

However,  it  was  undoubtedly  during  the  interval  in  ques- 
tion, that  a  schism  arose  in  the   church,  which   eventually 

*  Canonicus  Lichfeld.  de  Success.  Archiep.  Cant.  ap.  Wharton,  An- 
glia  Sacra,  i.  95. 

t  Osbern.  ap.  Wharton,  Angl.Sacr.  ii.  89. 

t  Burnet's  Hist.  Reform,  v.  i.  130.  v.  iii.  introd.  xvi.  fol. 


44  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

hastened  the  crisis  of  the  Reformation  beyond  any  one 
thing  else,  by  dividing  the  house  against  itself.  The  fa- 
mous Dunstan,  who  was  born  in  the  year  925,  was  the  man 
to  sow  the  Dragon's  tooth.  As  yet  the  different  orders  of 
ecclesiastics  had  lived  in  harmony.  There  were  secular 
clergy,  and  there  were  regulars;  but  the  latter  had  not  hith- 
erto taken  kindly  root  in  England.  The  great  number  of 
churches  existing  in  this  kingdom  in  the  middle  ages*  (of 
which  many  traces  yet  remain  in  a  name,  where  both  the 
building  itself  and  all  tradition  of  it  have  passed  away,)  be- 
speaks the  popularity  of  the  secular  clergy,  for  it  is  not  pro- 
bable that  these  churches  were  then  served  from  the  monas- 
teries; and,  moreover,  the  lodgement  which  the  seculars  ef- 
fected in  the  religious  houses,  as  the  latter  were  from  time  to 
time  evacuated  of  their  inmates  by  the  exterminating  sword 
of  the  Danes,  was  the  effect  as  well  as  the  cause  of  their 
increasing  influence.  Accordingly  Dunstan  found  many, 
if  not  all,  of  the  monasteries,  as  well  as  the  cathedrals,  in 
the  hands  of  the  canons  secular,  who  resided  with  their  fa- 
milies, performing  the  daily  service,  and  standing  upon 
much  the  same  footing  as  such  persons  now  do  in  our  col- 
legiate churches. t  The  saint,  however,  was  not  satisfied 
with  the  state  of  disorganization  and  decay  to  which  the 
monastic  order  was  reduced — he  determined  upon  its  refor- 
mation. The  Benedictine  rule,  now  become  popular 
throughout  Europe,  M^as  chosen  for  his  experiment,  and  the 

*  In  "  The  Supplication  of  Beggars,"  they  are  stated  at  52,000. 
(See  Fox's  Acts  and  Mon.  ii.  280.  edit.  1631-2,  with  the  note.)  The 
number  may  be  exaggerated;  but  it  will  seem  less  extraordinary  when 
it  is  remembered  that  one  of  the  qualifications  of  a  thegn  or  thane,  a 
lower  class  of  nobles,  having  some  analogy  to  the  barons  of  Norman 
times,  was,  that  he  should  have  five  hides  of  his  own  land  and  a 
church.     (See  Turner's  Angl.  Sax.  ii.  265.) 

t  Angl.  Sacr.  ii.  91. 


DUNSTAN.  45 

monks  were  set  up  against  the  canons  and  the  clergy.  Dun- 
stan  was  not  very  scrupulous  about  the  justice  of  the  means 
he  used  to  accomplish  his  end;  if  he  could  not  find  a  way  he 
could  make  one.  He  would  enjoin  the  king  (Edgar)  for  in- 
stance, as  a  penance,  to  suppress  the  seculars  and  introduce 
the  monks  into  the  churches  in  their  stead.  It  is  in  vain  that 
synods  are  held  wherein  the  grievances  of  the  ecclesiastics 
thus  violently  ejected  are  propounded;  it  is  in  vain  that  their 
sufferings  excite  the  sympathy  of  the  nobles  and  the  mon- 
arch who  plead  for  their  restoration.  "  That  be  far  from  you, 
— that  be  far  from  you,"  were  the  inexorable  words  which 
issued  from  a  crucifix  in  the  council-chamber,  for  Dunstan 
had  called  in  the  supernatural  to  his  help.  A  second  effort 
is  made  in  behalf  of  these  deprived  ministers.  Again  the 
saint  commits  the  decision  of  his  cause  to  heaven,  though 
less  innocently  than  before.  The  building  where  they 
met  is  shaken;  the  floor,  at  least  that  part  of  it  which  was 
occupied  by  the  adversaries  of  Dunstan,  sinks  from  under 
their  feet;  and  whilst  Dunstan  and  his  friends  continue  to 
sit  in  safety,  the  rest  are  destroyed  or  disabled  in  the  ruin. 
There  is  much  in  both  these  adventures  to  fasten  suspicion 
upon  the  saint;  for  Dunstan,  like  Cromwell  and  many  more, 
began  his  career,  in  all  probability,  as  a  bold  and  honest  zeal- 
ot, till  height  begot  high  thoughts,  and  he  ended  with  being 
an  ambitious  and  unflinching  adventurer.  He  was,  howev- 
er, one  of  the  master-spirits  of  the  age.  He  was,  strictly 
speaking,  the  founder  of  the  monastic  orders  in  England. 
They  regarded  him,  whilst  living,  as  their  fearless  champi- 
on, and  when  dead,  as  their  most  powerful  intercessor:  he 
gave  a  triumph  to  their  party  which  they  never  forfeited; 
and  having  once  by  his  means  taken  the  lead  of  the  secular 
clergy,  they  kept  it  to  the  Reformation.  From  amongst  the 
monks  of  Abingdon,  Winchester,  and  Glastonbury,  the  three 
greatest  monasteries  in  England,  and  from  the  last  more  es- 


46  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

pecially,  which  was  Dunstan's  own  abbey,  were  for  a  long 
while  chosen  almost  all  the  abbots,  principal  ecclesiastical 
officers,  and  bishops  of  England;*  such  was  the  influence 
which  this  extraordinary  man  had  established  in  his  genera- 
tion; and  the  natural  consequence  of  so  great  and  so  success^ 
ful  an  innovation  was,  a  deep-rooted  jealousy  on  the  part  of 
the  ancient  clergy  towards  the  regulars,  who  had  supplant- 
ed them,  and  heart-burnings  between  both  parties,  which 
were  injurious  alike  to  religion  itself  and  to  the  establish- 
ment which  should  have  been  its  support.  Traces  of  this 
schism,  for  such  it  really  was,  may  be  discovered  both  in 
great  matters  and  small.  It  spread  through  the  whole  church 
system  like  a  leprosy.  The  architecture  and  ornaments  of 
the  churches  bespoke  it.  Many  of  those  grotesque  figures 
which  are  seen  to  this  day  decorating  the  spouts  of  the 
roof,  or  the  labels  of  the  windows,  were  probably  meant 
as  a  fling  at  the  monks;  and  satirical  caricatures  to  the 
same  eflfect  may  still  occasionally  be  met  with  on  the 
painted  glass  of  our  cathedrals.  It  gives  a  complexion  to 
our  early  literature;  and  the  old  chroniclers,  being  chiefly 
monks,  betray  on  their  side  the  same  besetting  sin,  often 
without  intending  it,  and  sometimes  to  their  own  confusion. 
Thus  we  are  told  by  one,  that  as  long  as  the  canons  were  in 
possession  of  the  church  of  Winchester  no  notice  was  taken 
of  the  remains  of  St.  Swithin,  nor  had  a  single  miracle  been 
wrought  at  his  grave;  but  that  no  sooner  were  the  monks  in 
possession,  than  they  carefully  deposited  his  honoured 
bones  within  the  cathedral  in  a  case  of  silver  and  gold,  and 
miracles  ensued  abundantly;— premises  from  which  the  wor- 
thy Thomas  Rudborne,  himself  a  monk  of  Winchester,  did 
not  mean  that  we  should  infer  (what,  however,  we  natural- 
ly must)  that  the  canons  were  the  more  honest  men  of  the 

*  Hen.  Wharton,  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  1^6. 


REGULARS  AND  SECULARS.  47 

"WO.  Thus,  again,  the  biographer  of  Ulstan,  a  bishop  of 
Worcester  in  the  eleventh  century,  tells  us  that  as  the  bish- 
op was  on  a  journey  to  court,  to  be  present  at  the  Christ- 
mas festival,  he  halted  for  the  night  at  Merlave,  v^^here  he 
was  hospitably  entertained;  that  he  informed  his  attendants 
he  should  on  the  morrow  go  to  a  distant  church  which  he 
named;  that  the  morning  came,  and  with  it  a  heavy  storm  of 
snow  and  rain;  that  his  clergy  made  objections  to  such  a 
journey  in  such  weather;  that  go,  however,  the  bishop 
would,  even  though  he  should  be  alone;  that  they  were 
vexed,  indeed,  but  held  their  peace;  that  one  Frewen,  a 
man  of  more  audacity  and  address  than  the  others,  volun- 
teered to  be  the  good  bishop's  guide;  that  he  acquitted  him 
of  his  office  but  scurvily,  somewhat  as  Ariel  might  have 
done,  taking  him  by  the  hand  and  leading  him  by  a  road 
which  proved  knee-deep  in  mud  and  mire,  and  wherein  the 
bishop  lost  a  shoe;  for  it  was  a  plan  of  the  clergy,  says  Wil- 
liam of  Malmesbury,  who  tells  this  precious  story,  to  make 
the  bishop  repent  of  his  resolution  and  be  ruled  by  his  chap- 
lains. Ulstan,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  was  a  monk,  and  so 
was  his  biographer,  and  hence  this  impotent  attempt  to  ex- 
alt the  order  at  the  expense  of  the  poor  seculars.*  Such  ad- 
ventures are  old  wives'  tales,  it  is  true;  but  they  are  not  on 
that  account  the  less  fitted  for  showing  the  quarter  from 
which  the  wind  was  setting  in.  On  the  other  hand,  the  se- 
cular clergy,  though  on  many  accounts  acting  at  a  disadvan- 
tage, and  certainly  as  a  body  less  literary  than  the  monks, 
could  occasionally  retaliate.  We  have  seen  that  one  of  their 
weapons  of  warfare  was  to  decorate  their  churches  with  monk- 
ish figures  in  burlesque;  but  their  means  of  molestation  were 
not  confined  to  these  inartificial  expedients.  Langland,  for 
instance,  was  a  secular  priest  and  a  satirical  poet,  and  in 

*  Willelm.  Malmesb.  ap.  Wharton,  Angl.  Sacr.  ii.  260. 


48  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

his  vision  of  Pierce  Plowman  he  lashes  the  regulars  (though 
chiefly  a  class  of  them  of  whom  we  have  not  yet  had  oc- 
casion to  speak)  without  moderation  or  mercy.  Their  arti- 
fices to  procure  endowments  for  their  houses,  their  love  of 
pleasure,  their  luxury,  their  horses,  hawks,  and  hounds, 
are  all  touched  in  a  spirit  sufficiently  caustic*  It  is  pro- 
bable that  the  nobles  in  general  took  a  malicious  pleasure 
in  encouraging  this  exposure  of  a  class  of  men  who  were 
their  rivals  in  wealth,  and  their  superiors  in  intelligence, 
and  thus  widened  the  breach.  Chaucer,  who  was  a  cour- 
tier as  well  as  a  poet,  no  doubt  reflects  the  feelings  of  the 
upper  ranks  of  his  day,  and  he  cleaves  to  the  seculars. 
Meanwhile,  neither  of  these  ecclesiastical  parties  seeems 
to  have  been  aware  that  by  their  mutual  criminations  they 
were  preparing  the  nation  to  demand  a  reformation  in  the 
manners  of  them  all;  and  that  each  was  throwing  stones  at 
the  other,  when  the  houses  of  both  were  made  of  glass. 

But  their  strife  was  not  merely  a  strife  of  tongues;  it  was 
their  pleasure  to  thwart  one  another  in  deed  as  well  as  in 
word.  Whenever  the  monks  got  footing  in  the  cathedrals 
(which  in  many  instances  they  very  soon  did,)  they  proved 
a  perpetual  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  bishop,  more  especially 
if  he  happened  to  have  been  promoted  from  the  secular  cler- 
gy himself.  Then  they  carried  themselves  towards  him  in  a 
spirit  of  "  untamed  reluctance."  They  would  not  have 
this  man  to  reign  over  them.  The  bishops  were  vexed  at 
thus  having  to  encounter  foes  in  their  own  households, 
and  sometimes  we  find  them  expressing  an  angry  but  im- 
potent wish,  that  England  was  clear  of  them;  and  sometimes 
we  find  them  by  a  stretch  of  power  expeUing  the  whole 
fraternity  at  once,  and  filling  up  their  places  with  canons 
who  were  ever  wont  to  be  faithful  and  obedient  to  their 

*  See  Warton's  Hist,  of  English  Poetry,  i.  266.  4to. 


DIVISIONS  IN  THE  CHURCH,  49 

diocesan.*  On  one  occasion,  indeed,  this  policy  is  not 
only  put  in  practice  by  a  bishop  of  Winchester,  but  an  at- 
tempt is  made  by  him  to  induce  all  the  prelates  of  England 
to  adopt  the  same.  William  the  Conqueror  (for  it  was 
under  him  that  the  thing  occurred  (was  nothing  loth  to 
listen  to  the  overture  of  Walkelin  (for  that  was  the  bishop's 
name),  and  to  second  this  violent  measure,!  probably  mean- 
ing to  lay  claim  to  a  lion's  share  of  the  spoil;J  for  the  Nor- 
man princes,  like  some  more  modern  reformers,  had  the 
appetite  of  the  dragon  of  Wantly — "  houses  and  churches 
were  to  them  geese  and  turkeys;"  but  archbishop  Lanfranc, 
the  first  metropolitan  under  the  Norman  dynasty,  a  good 
man  and  a  wise,  stood  in  the  gap,  and  saved  his  church  from 
the  tender  mercies  of  a  reform,  which,  being  interpreted, 
would  have  been  a  robbery.  He,  again,  had  been  himself 
a  monk,  and  probably  would  on  that  account  view  the  trans- 
gressions of  the  monks  with  more  charity,  and,  perhaps, 
be  personally  less  exposed  to  their  malice.  And,  indeed, 
if  there  must  needs  be  this  division  of  seculars  and  regulars, 
it  was  a  happy  circumstance  for  the  church,  and  we  will 
add  for  the  country  (for  with  all  its  gross  defects  it  was  the 
fountain  of  life  and  light  to  the  nation  in  those  times),  that 
the  dignitaries  were  taken  from  both  classes,  though  chiefly, 
no  doubt,  from  the  regulars;  and  that  thus  they  mutually 
acted  as  checks  upon  those  classes,  in  any  momentry  ebul- 
litions of  party  spirit;  not  to  say  that  those  who  were  re- 
moved from  the  monastery  to  the  mitre  would  find  their 
past  prejudices  corrected  by  a  new  position  and  new  in- 
terests, and  by  the  discovery  that  men  of  their  own  order 
were  not  always  the  most  dutiful  of  their  sons.  Thus  in 
the  working  of  the  system,  there  were  some  of  those  self- 

*  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  435.  t  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  255. 

t  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  248. 


50  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

correcting  principles  and  balances  brought  into  play  which 
in  part  protected  it  fronm  itself,  and  the  like  to  which  (though 
so  often  overlooked  or  undervalued)  constitute  the  real 
worth  of  many  a  system  which  wears  an  unpromising  as- 
pect, and  which,  in  spite  of  those  querulous  empirics  who 
assure  us  that  it  ought  to  go  intolerably  wrong,  persists  in 
going  tolerably  right  notwithstanding.  This  observation 
is  thrown  out  merely  to  account  for  the  long  continuance 
of  a  system,  containing  within  itself  such  active  elements 
of  ruin,  as,  abstractedly  considered,  might  have  been  ex- 
pected to  put  an  end  to  it  much  sooner. 

But  this  is  not  all.  In  our  post-mortern  examination  of 
the  Roman  catholic  church  of  England,  undertaken  with  a 
view  to  ascertain  the  complicated  disorders  which  made  a 
way  for  its  final  dissolution,  another  feature  presents  itself 
akin  to  the  last.  William  the  Conqueror,  who  cared  as 
little  for  the  discipline  of  the  church  as  for  the  laws  of  the 
land,  thought  proper  to  exempt  a  monastery  which  he  had 
founded  (that  of  St.  Martin  de  Bello)  from  episcopal  juris- 
diction altogether.  From  this  moment  a  mad  ambition 
drove  the  monks  of  the  principal  religious  houses  to  seek 
for  themselves  a  similar  privilege.  Baldwin,  abbot  of  St. 
Edmunds  (Bury),  at  that  time  one  of  the  finest  foundations 
in  England,  obtained  such  exemption  from  pope  Alexander, 
although,  in  the  deed  which  conferred  it,  and  which  was 
executed  before  the  year  1073,  the  pope,  as  if  lending  him- 
self to  a  transaction  hitherto  unattempted  and  unheard  of, 
expresses  himself  with  some  reserve — "  as  far  as  the  thing 
could  be  done,  salvci  primafis  obedienticu''^  consistently 
with  obedience  to  the  primate.  Lanfranc,  however,  then 
archbishop,  who  watched  over  the  interests  of  the  church 
(as  we  have  already  seen)  with  a  cautious  and  prophetic 
eye,  took  away  this  dangerous  privilege  from  the  abbot, 
on  his  return  to  England,  and  reduced  him  to  submission. 


CHARTERS  OF  EXEMPTION.  51 

But  less  resolute  men,  such  as  Radulph,  William,  and  Theo- 
bald, succeeding  him  in  the  primacy,  and  the  liberties  of 
the  church  of  England  having  been,  in  the  mean  while, 
crippled  by  the  machinations  of  Rome,  the  monks  took 
courage,  and,  feeling  their  own  strength,  claimed  exemption 
from  the  jurisdiction  of  archbishops  as  well  as  bishops,  as 
a  matter  of  right;  and,  producing  certain  charters  of  an- 
cient date  (so  they  pretended),  granted  to  them  by  popes  or 
princes,  carried  their  suit  into  the  courts  of  Rome,  and  got 
it  confirmed.  This  dispensation,  bad  in  theory,  was  not 
better  in  practice.  The  monks  of  Malmesbury,  for  instance, 
had  lately  (about  a.  d.  1180)  elected  an  abbot.  The  bishop 
of  Salisbury  interdicts  the  abbot  elect  from  receiving  the 
benediction  at  any  other  hands  than  his  own;  whereupon 
the  latter  goes  into  Wales,  aad  procures  it  from  the  bishop 
of  Landaff  (for  the  Welsh  church  was  still  independent  of 
England);  on  this  the  archbishop  suspends  the  abbot  until 
he  can  justfy  his  disobedience  by  producing  his  letters  of 
exemption.  The  abbot  presents  to  the  archbishop  his 
charter,  which  turns  out  to  be  faulty  in  the  style,  the 
thread,  and  the  seal,  and  which  savours  little  of  the  court 
of  Rome.  The  bishop  asserts  it  to  be  spurious,  and  ex- 
hibits many  professions  of  submission  on  the  part  of  the 
abbots  of  Malmesbury,  made  to  him  or  his  predecessors. 
The  abbot  is  contumacious,  declares  that  he  holds  himself 
bound  to  answer  to  no  superior,  whether  bishop  or  arch- 
bishop, but  to  the  pope  only;  and  adds,  "  poor  and  miserable 
is  the  abbot  who  does  not  utterly  annihilate  the  jurisdiction  of 
a  bishop,  when,  for  a  single  ounce  of  gold  a  year,  he  may 
buy  full  liberty  for  himself  from  Rome."  The  archbishop, 
therefore,  entreats  the  pope  not  to  aid  and  abet  this  turbu- 
lent person;  and,  at  the  same  time,  bitterly  laments  the  in- 
jury done,  not  to  the  bishops  only,  but  to  the  whole  church, 
by  these  papal  exemptions — exemptions  which  had  proved 


52  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

ruinous   to   the  peace,  discipline,    and  good  order  of  the 
monasteries  themselves  which  enjoyed  them.* 

Here,  therefore,  was  a  rift  in  the  church,  which  time 
only  widened,  and  which  unfitted  it  for  sustaining  a  storm 
whenever  it  should  come.  But  the  mischief  did  not  end 
here.  Long  before  the  monks  had  escaped  from  the  eye 
of  their  bishop,  they  had  relaxed  from  the  Sabine  simplicity 
of  their  primitive  institutions;  now  that  they  were  left  at 
liberty  to  do  what  seemed  good  in  their  own  sight,  matters 
went  worse.  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  a  writer  of  the  twelfth 
century,  tells  us,  that  on  his  return  from  abroad  (he  had 
been  prosecuting  his  theological  studies  at  Paris)  he  dined 
with  the  monks  of  Canterbury.  Having  eaten  of  their 
bread,  he  lifts  up  his  heel  agaist  them,  and  maliciously  ex- 
poses their  bill  of  fare.  It  is  curious  as  a  picture  of  the 
times: — sixteen  lordly  dishes  and  upwards,  besides  a  course 
of  herbs,  which  latter,  however,  were  not  in  much  request; 
fish  of  divers  kinds — roast  and  boiled,  stewed  and  fried; 
omelets,  seasoned  meats,  and  sundry  provocatives  of  the 
palate,  prepared  by  cunning  cooks;  wines  in  ample  profu- 
sion; sicera,  piment,  claret,  must,  mede,  and  moretum 
(mulberry), — any  thing  and  every  thing  but  ale,  the  boast 
of  England,  and  more  especially  of  Kent.  "  What  would 
Paul  the  Hermit  have  said  to  all  this?"  thinks  the  splenetic 
Giraldus  to  himself,  "  or  St.  Anthony?  or  St.  Benedict,  the 
founder  of  the  order?"t  Such  evidence,  however,  is  to  be 
received  with  considerable  suspicion.  There  was  for  ages 
before  their  suppression,  a  run  at  the  monks.  A  strong 
party  spirit  discovers  itself  in  almost  all  that  relates  to  the 
church  in  these  middle  ages,  much  as  we  are  told  of  the 
harmony  that  prevailed  in  it  before  the  reformation.  The 
writer  just  quoted  was  a  Welsh  archdeacon,  very  far  from 

*  Angl.  Sacr.  ii.  prsef.  p.  4.  t  Angl.  Sacr.  ii.  480. 


CHARTERS  01   EXEMPTION.  53 

a  good-natured  Sir  Hugh,  who  would  "  persuade  a  man  not 
to  make  a  star-chamber  matter  of  it;"  on  the  contrary,  he 
finds  nothing  as  it  should  be:  he  is  one  of  those  dissatisfied 
spirits  that  delight  in  the  study  of  morbid  anatomy;  neither 
monks  nor  bishops  please  him;  he  vexes  himself  because  he 
cannot  make  a  hundred  watches  go  by  his  own,  never  suspect- 
ing that,  after  all,  his  own  maybe  wrong;  and,  in  his  memoir 
of  the  Rights  and  Conditions  of  the  Church  of  South  Wales, 
he  sums  up  the  merits  of  the  Cambrian  Clergy  with  a  testy 
anathema,  something  after  tlie  manner  of  Bruce's  benedic- 
tion of  the  monks  of  Gondar,  against  the  whole  body,  as 
traitors  to  him  (though  it  does  not  appear  that  they  had  ever 
trusted  him,)  and  to  the  liberties  of  the  church  to  which  they 
belonged.'-  But,  when  every  allowance  is  made  for  the  pre- 
judice of  the  witnesses  of  the  day,  it  is  clear  that  by  the 
thirteenth  century,  monks  were  no  longer  men  of  St.  Bene- 
dict, and  that  another  Dunslan,  or  a  better  man,  was  wanted 
to  revive  the  monastic  spirit,  and  to  recover  for  the  regulars 
the  credit  they  had  lost.  Accordingly,  in  this  century,  the 
mendicant  orders  recently  brought  into  being — the  maggots 
not  so  much  of  corrupted  texts  as  of  corrupted  times — found 
their  way  into  England.  The  Franciscans,  or  Friars  Minors, 
the  Dominicans,  or  Black  Friars;  the  Carmelites,  or  White 
Friars;  and  the  Augustins,  or  Grey  Friars;  were  the  four 
divisions.  Of  these  the  two  former  were  the  most  consider- 
able; the  Franciscans  were  the  chief  of  all.  The  first 
settlement  of  these  last  was  at  Canterbury,  in  1234;  that  of 
the  Dominicans,  thirteen  years  earlier,  at  Oxford;  at  which 
place,  as  well  as  at  Cambridge,  all  the  four  orders  soon  found 
themselves  in  possession  of  flourishing  houses.t  There  was 
much  to  captivate  in  their  prospectus.  All  worldly  views 
they  renounced;  they  depended  upon  the  alms  of  the  people; 

*  Angl.  Sacr.  ii.  611.        t  Warton's  Hist,  of  Poetry,  i.  290.  4to. 
5* 


54  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

and  the  people,  admiring  their  disinterestedness,  and  reve- 
rencing their  piety  (which  was,  or  which  seemed  to  be,  much 
beyond  that  of  the  monks,)  were  cheerful  givers.  They 
cultivated  learning  with  great  success;  filled  the  professors' 
chairs  in  the  universities;  searched  out  manuscripts,  and 
multiplied  the  copies;  collected  libraries  at  any  cost  (for 
their  popularity  furnished  them  with  the  means);  not  a 
treatise  on  the  arts,  theology  or  the  civil  law  appeared,  but 
the  friars  bought  it  up.  They  improved  the  architecture  of 
their  country;  for  though  their  vow,  like  that  oftheRheca- 
bites,  scarcely  allowed  them  to  sow  seed  or  plant  vineyards, 
or  have  any,  it  did  not  deny  to  them  the  building  of  houses; 
and,  accordingly,  on  these  were  lavished  the  ample  sums 
which  the  munificence  of  their  benefactors  poured  into  their 
treasury.  It  was  the  ambition  of  the  great  and  noble  that  their 
bones  should  rest  within  these  hallowed  walls;  and  sumptu- 
ous shrines  bespoke  the  mighty  dead  that  slept  in  the  chapel 
of  St.  Francis.  All  this  might  be  well;  but  your  friar  was 
a  sturdy  beggar,  and  prosperity  made  him  forget  himself. 
He  learned  to  drop  the  literary  and  religious  character,  and 
assume  the  politician.  He  engaged  m  dioplomacy:  mixed 
in  the  intrigues  of  courts;  discussed  treaties,  formed  alli- 
ances, and  resolutely  maintained  the  authority  of  the  pope 
(whose  creature  he  was)  against  all  the  princes  and  prelates 
of  Christendom.  He  was  furnished  by  his  master  with 
powers  for  effecting  all  this;  and  these  he  used  to  the  con- 
fusion both  of  seculars  and  monks.  He  could  preach 
where  he  would,  if  he  could  not  lawfully  take  possession 
of  the  church  of  the  minister,  he  could  erect  his  ambulatory 
pulpit  at  any  cross,  in  any  parish,  and  rail  (as  he  generally 
did)  at  the  supineness  and  ignorance  of  the  resident  pastor. 
If  he  chanced  to  be  received  under  the  parsonage  roof  (as 
he  seldom  was,)  he  was  felt  to  be  a  snake  in  the  grass 
ready  to  betray  his  host  in  return  for  his  hospitality;  and, 


MENDICANT  ORDERS.  55 

if  he  saw  a  fowl  or  a  flask  on  his  table,  to  denounce  him, 
in  his  next  day's  harangue,  as  a  gluttonous  man  and  a  wine- 
bibber.*     He  could  confess  whosoever  might  come  to  him. 
It  was  to  no  purpose  that  a  parish  priest  refused  absolution 
to  any  black  sheep  of  his  flock;  away  he  went  to  a  Fran- 
ciscan, and  absolution  was  given  him  at  once;  the  more 
readily,  indeed,  as  an  opportunity  was  thus    afforded  the 
friar  of  expressing  his  contempt  of  every  ecclesiastical  body 
but  his  own.     Nor  did  he  enter  into  the  labours  of  the  pa- 
rochial minister  only;  he  had  nobler  game  in  another  class 
of  seculars — the  cathedral  clergy.      These  he  reduced  to 
poverty,  and  the  venerable  edifices  to  which  they  belonged 
to  decay.     The  cathedrals  were  erected  and  maintained  by 
the  proceeds  of  lands — endowments  for  the  most  part  received 
from  kings,  as  the  parish  churches  were  generally  endowed 
by  lords  of  manors;  and  dioceses,  even  in  this  day,  would  be 
found,  we  suspect,  on  a  careful  examination,  to  have  a  more 
than  imaginary  reference  in  their  dimensions  to  the  limits  of 
the  several  Saxon  kingdoms  into  which  the  island  was  divi- 
ded, as  parishes  certainly  have  a  reference  to  the  estates  of 
individuals.     They  were  further  supported  by  pentecostals, 
which  was  an  annual  composition  paid  by  every  household 
at  Pentecost;  as  an  acknowledgement  of  attachment  to  the 
mother  church;  and,  lasfly,  by  benefactions,  oblations,  and 
obits,  the  free-will  offerings  of  the  multitude.     For  a  long 
time  these  two  latter  sources  of  revenue  were  very  consid- 
erable.    The  people  had  a  pride  and  pleasure  in  contribut- 
ing to  the  erection,  the  repairs,  and  the  maintenance  of  these 
beautiful  structures,  which  were  at  once  the  goodly  orna- 
ments of  the  districts  in  which  they  stood;  the  temples  of 
God,  to  whose  service  the  pious  felt  themselves  thus  giving 
back  a  part  of  what  he  had  freely  conferred  on  them;  and 

*  Erasmi  Colloq.  Francisoani. 


56  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  tombs  of  their  fathers;  for  it  was  the  desire  of  those 
simple  days  to  be  buried  near  tlie  grave  of  some  man  of 
God,  whose  memory  was  fragrant  among  them,  and  to  lay 
their  bones  beside  his  bones.  But  the  friars  poisoned  the 
minds  of  the  people,  and  shook  this  allegiance.  St.  Francis 
was  above  all  the  saints,  not  to  say  above  the  Saviour  him- 
self. To  die  in  the  weeds  of  a  Franciscan,  was  to  die  the 
death  of  the  righteous:  and  to  repose  after  death  in  a  Fran- 
ciscan monastery,  was  to  have  angels  for  the  guardians  of 
your  sepulchre.  Accordingly,  about  the  fourteenth  century, 
the  pentecostals  began  to  be  evaded;  recovery  was  to  be 
made  of  them  by  force  of  law;  and  free-will  offerings  to 
the  cathedrals  ceased  altogether.  The  number  of  residen- 
tiaries  was  consequently  reduced  (a  measure  of  necessity, 
which  involved  much  subsequent  inconvenience  and  legal 
dispute,)  and  the  buildings  themselves  were  with  difficulty 
preserved  from  the  injuries  of  time.*  Neither  did  the 
schism  end  here.  Before,  however,  we  go  further,  it  may 
due  to  ourselves  to  remark,  that  it  is  not  because  an  historian 
of  the  reformation,  protestant  though  he  be,  finds  pleasure 
in  thus  uncovering  the  nakedness  of  the  Roman  catholic 
church,  that  he  dwells  so  exclusively  on  its  peccant  parts, 
nor  yet  because  he  is  not  aware  that  better  things  may  be 
said  of  it;  but  simply  because  his  subject  leads  him  to  de- 
velope  those  defects,  both  in  its  doctrine  and  discipline 
which  paved  the  way  for  its  eventual  overthrow,  not  to  re- 
count the  virtues  which,  in  spite  of  such  defects,  preserved 
it  so  long.  At  the  same  time,  he  naturally  feels  some  sa- 
tisfaction in  vindicating  his  own  church  from  a  comparison 
by  which  it  is  thought  to  suffer,  and  which  represents  it  as 
full  of  discord  and  division,  whilst  the  church  which  itsup- 

*  See  an  Essay  on  the  Government  of  the  Church  of  England,  by 
George  Reynolds,  Archdeacon  of  Lincoln,  p.  101.  et  seq. 


HABITS  OF  THE  MENDICANTS.  57 

planted  was  at  unity  with  itself.  Such  was  not,  we  see, 
the  case.  Time  has,  indeed,  hushed  all  report  of  the 
bickerings  of  men  who  lived  three  or  four  centuries  ago, 
and  it  may  be  invidious  to  awake  the  echo;  but  tenderness 
to  the  dead  must  not  betray  us  into  injustice  to  the  living, 
and  however  error  may  be  concealed,  it  must  not  be  conse- 
'  crated  by  the  grave.  But  to  return:  hitherto  we  have  rep- 
resented the  friars  as  the  enemies  of  the  secular  clergy  only, 
whether  cathedral  or  parochial.  They  had  their  stone, 
however,  to  cast  at  the  monks.  It  was  their  pleasure  to 
contrast  their  own  affected  poverty  (which  lasted  just  so 
long  as  they  could  not  help  it)  with  the  gallant  bearing, 
profuse  expenditure,  and  ample  retinues  of  these  latter,  who, 
in  their  turn,  expressed  their  contempt  for  them,  not  the  less 
cordially,  perhaps  from  a  consciousness  that  the  contrast 
was  striking.  In  a  manuscript  which  once  belonged  to  a 
learned  Benedictine,  and  is  now  in  the  library  of  Corpus 
Christi  College,  Cambridge,  is  a  drawing  of  four  devils 
hugging  four  mendicant  friars,  one  of  each  order,  with  great 
familarity  and  affection.*  But  other  weapons,  offensive  and 
defensive,  were  used  besides  ridicule.  Thus  the  greater 
monasteries  would  occasionally  rouse  themselves,  and  found 
a  small  college  or  hall  at  the  universities  for  their  own 
novices,  that  they  might  not  resign  to  their  antagonists,  with- 
out a  struggle,  the  entire  possession  of  those  ancient  seats 
of  learning.  So,  again,  when  their  members  proceeded  to 
degrees,  they  would  often  do  it  with  studious  costs  and 
popular  display,  turning  the  occasion  into  a  holiday  specta- 
cle, which  might  be  set  in  balance  against  the  miracles, 
mysteries,  and  other  theatrical  attractions  of  the  mendi- 
cants.t  These  latter,  however,  might  have  long  laughed 
at  such  artifices,  had  they  continued  true  to  one  another; 


*  Warton's  Hist,  of  English  Poetry,  i.  292.  4to. 
+  Ihid.  i.  290. 


58  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

but  the  arrow  which  pierced  them  to  the  heart  was  feathered 
from  their  own  wing.  Their  principles,  like  those  of 
modern  dissenters,  propagated  schism;  they  split  amongst 
themselves;  and  the  four  orders  tore  the  coat,  which  should 
be  without  seam,  into  as  many  parts.  Mutual  abuse,  in- 
stead of  cordial  co-operation,  was  their  maxim.  The  poor 
ploughman  who  sought  instruction  in  his  creed  at  the  hands 
of  the  Friars  Minors,  was  only  told,  as  he  valued  his  soul, 
to  beware  of  the  Carmelites;  the  Carmelites  promoted  his 
edification  by  denouncing  the  Dominican;  the  Dominicans 
in  their  turn  by  condemning  the  Augiistins.  "  Be  true  to 
us,"  was  the  language  of  each;  "  give  us  your  money, 
and  you  shall  be  saved  without  a  creed."*  Indeed,  the 
frailty  of  human  nature  soon  found  out  the  weak  places  of 
the  mendicant  system.  Soon  had  the  primitive  zeal  of  its 
founders  burnt  itself  out;  and  then  its  censer  was  no  longer 
lighted  with  fire  from  the  altar: — a  living  was  to  be  made. 
The  vows  of  voluntary  poverty  only  led  to  Jesuitical  expe- 
dients for  evading  it;  a  straining  at  gnats  and  swallowing  of 
camels.  The  populace  were  to  be  alarmed,  or  caressed, 
or  cajoled  out  of  a  subsistence.  A  death  bed  was  a  friar's 
harvest;  then  were  suggested  the  foundation  of  chantries, 
and  the  provision  of  masses  and  wax-lights.  The  confes- 
sional was  his  excliequer;  there  hints  were  dropped  that 
the  convent  needed  a  new  window,  or  that  it  owed  "  fortie 
pound  for  stones."  Was  the  good  man  of  tlie  house  re- 
fractory? The  friar  had  the  art  of  leading  the  women  cap- 
tive, and  reaching  the  family  purse  by  means  of  the  vvife.t 
Was  the  piety  of  the  public  to  be  stimulated?  Rival  relics 
were  set  up,  and  impostures  of  all  kinds  multiplied  without 
shame,  to  the  impoverishment  of  the  people,  the  disgrace  of 
the  church,  and  the  scandal  of  Christianity. 

*  Warton's  Hist,  of  English  Poetry,  1.  296. 
t  Erasm.  Colloq.  Franciscani.  Chaucer. 


ADVANTAGE  OF    ENDOWMENTS.  59 

It  is  revolting  to  bear  record  of  these  villanies — to  see 
sordid  advantage  taken  of  the  most  sacred  feelings  of  man- 
kind, and  religion  itself  subjected  to  suspicion  through  the 
hypocrisy  of  its  professors.  But,  however  humiliating 
may  be  the  confession,  experience  has  sanctioned  it  as  a 
truth,  that  an  indigent  church  makes  a  corrupt  clergy;  that 
in  order  to  secure  a  priesthood  which  shall  wear  well,  a 
permanent  provision  must  be  set  aside  for  their  maintenance 
— such  a  provision  as  shall  induce  men  duly  qualified,  to 
enter  the  church,  for  it  is  visionary  to  suppose  that  tempo- 
ral motives  will  not  have  their  weight  in  this  temporal  state 
of  things;  and  it  is  unreasonable  to  expect  that  persons  who 
are  excluded  by  the  rules  of  society  from  the  usual  inlets  to 
wealth,  the  courts,  the  camp,  or  the  exchange,  and  who 
cannot  but  know  or  feel,  when  they  are  honestly  doing 
their  duty,  that  they  are  as  good  commonwealth's  men,  to 
put  it  upon  no  higher  ground,  as  any  others,  and  therefore 
have  as  good  a  right  to  its  liberal  regards  as  any  others, 
should  be  content  to  waive  this  right; — such  a  provision  as 
shall  be  enough  to  ensure  recruits  for  the  priesthood  from 
all  ranks,  the  highest  as  well  as  those  below,  and  so  to  en- 
sure their  easy  intercourse  with  all  ranks;  for  the  leaven 
should  leaven  the  ivhole  lump; — such  a  provision  as  should 
encourage  them  to  speak  with  all  boldness,  crouching  to 
no  man  for  their  morsel  of  bread,  nor  tempted  to  lick  the 
hand  that  feeds  them; — such  a  provision  as  should  prevent 
the  meanness  of  their  condition  from  prejudicing  the  force  of 
their  reasons,  or^give  occasion  to  a  high-minded  hearer  to  ac- 
cuse their  plain  speech  of  unmannerly  presumption.  Sure- 
ly, until  we  can  find  such  a  church  upon  earth,  in  all  her 
members,  and  in  all  the  successive  generations  of  her  mem- 
bers, as  can  be  true  to  the  image  of  our  Lord,  it  is  a  vision 
indeed  to  reject  all  adventitious  support,  such  as  her  condi- 
tion may  require,  and  to  say  with  the  great  puritan  poet, 


60  REFORMATION  IN    ENGLAND. 

that  she  should  be  content,  as  he  was,  "  to  ride  upon  an 
ass."* 

It  is  needless  to  add,  that  the  friars  at  length  became  as 
rottenness  to  the  bones  of  the  Roman  catholic  church;  that, 
by  the  time  of  Erasmus  and  Luther,  they  were  the  butt  at 
which  every  dissolute  idler,  on  every  tavern  bench,  dis- 
charged his  shaft,  hitting  the  establishment,  and  religion  it- 
self, through  their  sides;  that  they  were  exhibited  in  pot- 
house pictures  as  foxes  preaching,  with  the  neck  of  a  sto- 
len goose  peeping  out  of  the  hood  behind;  as  wolves  giving 
absolutions,  with  a  sheep  muffled  up  in  their  cloaks;  as  apes 
sitting  by  a  'sick  man's  bed,  with  a  crucifix  in  one  hand, 
and  with  the  other  in  the  sufferer's  fob.f  Still  the  disaffect- 
tion  which  this  ridicule  both  indicated  and  promoted,  was 
in  some  degree  neutralised.  There  was,  something,  after 
all,  in  the  constitution  of  such  an  order  as  the  friars,  which 
gratified  the  feelings  of  the  people,  and  which  led  to  their 
continued  toleration,  if  not  to  their  aggrandisement.  They 
were,  for  the  most  part,  men  of  themselves;  they  were  the 
democratic  portion  of  the  church.  It  no  doubt  flattered  the 
vanity  of  the  peasant  or  mechanic,  to  see  his  own  flesh  and 
blood  bearding  the  first-born  of  Egypt  with  whom  he  was 
brought  into  contact,  or  rather  collision,  in  the  members  of 
the  old  and  orthodox  abbeys;  nor  would  it  be  less  grateful 
perhaps,  to  an  unlettered  man  to  hear  the  clerk  of  his  own 

*  Milton,  i.  80.  Prose  Works,  Burnett's  ed.  Bishop  Jewel  argues 
the  question  more  practically  than  Milton;  and,  allowing  that  there 
are  many  who  would  teach  Christ  for  Christ's  sake,  looks  onward  to 
posterity,  and  asks  of  fathers,  whether  their  own  zeal  will  cause  them 
to  "  keep  their  children  at  school  until  four  and  twenty  years  old,  at 
their  own  charges,  that  in  the  end  they  may  live  in  glorious  poverty? 
that  they  may  live  poorly  and  naked,  like  the  prophets  and  the  apos- 
ties?"  and  he  foretells  that  the  event  would  be  a  lapse  into  ignorance 
— Serm.  on  Ps.  Ixix.  9. 

t  Erasm.  Colloq.    Franciscani. 


DEGENERACY  OF  THE  FRIARS.  61 

name,  and  of  his  own  breeding,  starting  and  maintaining 
with  vast  pertinacity  theological  subleties,  which  had  little 
other  merit,  to  be  sure,  than  that  of  being  In  opposition  to 
received  opinions,  and  an  assertion  of  the  right  of  every 
man  to  think  for  himself,  however  ill  he  might  be  qualified 
for  doing  so  to  advantage. 

Then,  again  the  pope  was  a  tower  of  strength  to  the 
mendicant  orders.  They  were  the  men  of  his  right  hand; 
and  it  may  be  observed,  that  when  the  Reformation  came 
on,  which  was,  amidst  other  and  nobler  interests  concerned, 
a  struggle  in  the  first  instance  between  the  king  and  the  pope 
for  the  mastery,  the  smaller  monasteries  (which  were  those 
of  the  friars)  were  the  first  confiscated  by  Henry;  for  he 
considered  them  the  barracks  from  which  his  most  invete- 
rate enemies  issued  to  the  contest,  prepared  to  maintain  the 
cause  of  their  sovereign  lord  the  pope  against  any  and  every 
antagonist.  Lastly,  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten,  that  the  cloak 
of  the  friar  was  the  refuge  for  a  class  of  men  who  would 
now  be  supported  by  parish  relief,  and  though  in  both  cases 
the  idle  might  often  be  enabled  hereby  to  enter  into  the  la- 
bours of  others,  yet  often  again  assistance  would  be  thus  ad- 
ministered to  the  blameless  sufferer,  and  the  load  of  life  on 
the  whole  be  lightened  to  the  poor. 

Such  were  some  of  the  circumstances  tliat  still  upheld 
the  mendicants  even  in  the  days  of  their  degeneracy,  when 
the  spirit  was  gone  that  had  urged  them  indeed  to  enthusi- 
astic extravagances  and  puerile  superstitions,  but  which  was 
respected  because  it  was  thought  to  be  sincere;  and  when 
little  remained  behind  but  a  caput  moftuuin  of  unmeaning 
forms  of  devotion,  and  crafty  contrivances  for  gain. 

6 


CHAPTER  III. 

PROGRESS    OF    GRIEVANCES    UNDER    THE    NORMAN  PRINCES. 

PAPAL    INTERFERENCE. LEGATES. COLLISION  OF  ROMAN 

AND  ENGLISH  FORMS  OF  LAW. INCONVENIENCES  ATTEND- 
ING IT. 

It  has  been  already  observed  that  the  distance  of  Eng- 
land from  Italy,  which  had  helped  to  deliver  our  borders 
from  the  political  tyranny  of  imperial  Rome,  served  also  to 
protect  the  liberties  of  our  church  from  the  spiritual  thral- 
dom of  papal  Rome.  The  inhabitants  of  this  island,  en- 
tirely cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  were  happily  aban- 
doned to  their  own  devices.  They  were  themselves  the 
best  judges  of  their  own  wants,  and  of  the  institutions 
which  were  suited  to  their  own  habits  and  circumstances; 
and  though  some  time  might  elapse  whilst  they  were  thus 
groping  out  their  way,  which  might  have  been  saved  by 
accepting  foreign  guidance,  and  though  some  rude  traces  of 
their  slow  and  tentative  progress  towards  their  end  ^might 
even  afterwards  appear  in  the  results  of  their  labours,  still 
it  was  most  desirable  in  the  establishment  of  a  church  that 
it  should  gradually  adapt  itself  in  its  growth  and  formation 
to  the  wants,  the  wishes,  and  the  actual  condition  of  the 
country.  The  least  of  all  seeds  was  then  most  likely  to 
become  the  greatest  of  trees,  when  it  was  left  to  thrive 
alone  {occulto  velut  arbor  asvo);  when  its  roots  were  quietly 
suflered  to  feel  for  the  soil  that  fed  them  best,  and  its 
branches  to  stretch  out  their  arms  towards  the  quarter  of  the 
heavens  which  proved  the  most  genial.  The  spirit  of  Chris- 
lianily  itself,  at  its  first  appearance,  invited  this  forbearance 
on  the  part  of  those  amongst  whom  it  came,  not  meddling 


INDEPENDENCE  OF  THE  CHURCH.  63 

bodily  with  the  civil  or  political  rights  of  the  nations  it 
visited,  and  leaving  their  laws  and  forms  of  government, 
in  their  letter  at  least,  just  what  it  found  them. 

Thus  in  England  the  church  and  state  for  a  long  time 
grew  up  together,  the  pope  occasionally  interfering,  though 
generally  on  invitation,  and  scarcely  ever  in  a  manner  to 
disturb  the  harmony  of  the  system.  In  Saxon  times,  we 
find  the  prelate  and  the  king  friends  and  fellow-workers 
together — the  one  teaching  the  people,  the  other  taking  an 
interest  in  his  office,  and  making  provision  for  its  perma- 
nent continuance.  The  same  good  understanding  which 
subsisted  between  the  bishop  and  the  sovereign,  subsisted 
also  between  the  priest  and  the  noble:  here,  again,  the  one 
communicated  a  knowledge  of  God's  laws  to  the  inhabitants 
of  the  manor,  the  other  encouraged  the  good  work,  and 
secured  a  similar  benefit  to  his  estate  for  ever  by  a  fixed 
endowment;  for  in  those  days  there  was  a  belief  that  the 
foundations  of  a  state  were  best  laid  in  religion,  and  that 
persons  were  better  subjects  and  better  citizens  in  propor- 
tion as  they  were  better  men.  Did  difficulties  present  them- 
selves in  questions  ecclesiastical;  were  obstacles  to  be  re- 
moved, or  improvements  to  be  made,  or  observances  to  be 
enforced,  the  nation  had  that  within  itself  which  usually 
supplied  the  remedy.  Matters  were  transacted  within  the 
four  seas.  Civil  interpositions,  e.  g.  whether  of  the  king 
or  the  great  council,  protected  the  persons  and  estates  of 
the  clergy,  determined  the  union  or  dissolution  of  dioceses, 
directed  the  recovery  of  tithes;  defined  and  punished  sac- 
rilege, prescribed  and  limited  the  right  of  sanctuary,  insisted 
upon  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  and  fined  for  the  con- 
tempt of  it.*      Were  the  laws  to  be  administered?      Still 

*  Leges  Tnae,  1.  Aluredi,  23,  24.  Edmundi,  57.  Edgari,  62.  Bede's 
Eccl.  Hist.  178.  291.  See  also  Sharon  Turner's  Anglo-Saxons,  iii. 
248.  et  seq. 


64  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

there  was  the  same  intimate  union  maintained  between  cle- 
rical and  secular  interests.  The  bishop  or  his  deputy  (the 
missus  episcopi)  presided  with  the  alderman  in  the  county 
court,  with  the  cent-grave  in  the  hundred,  with  the  town- 
reeve  in  the  borough,  with  the  steward  of  the  manor  in 
each  parish;  and  judicial  decisions  which  thus  proceeded 
from  tlie  temporal  and  spiritual  authorities  combined  were 
received  with  a  respect  which  neither  party  could  have 
secured  for  them,  if  acting  alone.*  Meanwhile  all  collision 
of  church  and  state  was  avoided,  and  a  wholesome  sym- 
pathy sprung  up  between  them  as  they  mutually  shed  an 
influence  on  each  other.  William,  however,  was  jealous 
of  the  clergy,  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  Dunstan  had 
not  done  much  to  make  them  find  favour  in  the  eyes  of  a 
high-spirited  monarch.  Accordingly,  a  measure  which  he 
had  already  adopted  in  his  Norman  dominions  he  extended 
to  England,  and  separated  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  courts. 
The  remote  consequences  of  this  innovation  were  the  re- 
verse of  what  was  intended;  but  its  direct  effect  was  to 
withdraw  considerable  power  from  the  hands  of  the  bishop; 
to  diminish  his  income  by  the  fines  which  fell  to  his  share; 
and  to  withhold  from  him  the  opportunity  of  appearing  to 
advantage  before  the  people,  who  could  not  fail  of  drawing 
a  comparison  between  him  and  the  secular  judges  who  sat 
with  him;  between  the  man  of  learning  and  the  men  of 
arms.f  It  was  not  till  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Henry  I. 
that  the  change  began  to  make  itself  felt.  Now,  however, 
the  clergy,  no  longer  supported  by  the  crown  in  the  same 
degree  as  before,  nor  making  common  cause  with  the  no- 
bles, were  unable  to  uphold  the  independence  of  the  national 
churcli  against  the  pope,  who  was  waxing  stronger  every 

*  Essay  upon  the  Government  of  the  Church  of  England,  by  George 
Reynolds,  27. 
t  Reynolds,  30, 

\ 


PAPAL  ENCROACHMENTS.  65 

(Jay;  for  he  was  even  then  no  indiiierent  spectator  of  the 
affairs  of  nations,  but  was  still  on  the  watch  ready  to  profit 
by  the  mistakes  of  others.  Already  he  had  made  several 
unsuccessful  attempts  on  the  liberties  of  England.  The 
case  of  Bishop  Wilfrid  was  briefly  alluded  to  in  the  first 
chapter.  He  was  ejected  from  his  see  by  Ecgfrid,  king  of 
Northumbria;  he  carried  his  complaints  to  Rome;  it  was 
the  judgment  of  Pope  Agatho  in  council  that  he  had  been 
unjustly  deprived.  After  a  while  he  returned  to  England 
and  resumed  his  episcopal  functions;  but  it  was  at  the  re- 
quest of  King  Aldfrid,  who  had  in  the  mean  time  succeeded 
Ecgfrid.  This  proves  something;  but  the  sequel  of  the  story 
proves  more.  Wilfrid  ofl'ends  again — is  again  deprived; 
again  appeals  to  Rome;  and  presents  himself  together  with 
his  accusers  before  Pope  John,  the  successor  of  Agatho. 
Once  more  the  decision  is  in  favour  of  the  bishop;  and  the 
pope  on  this  occasion  writes  to  the  two  kings,  Ethelred 
and  Aldfrid,  to  reinstall  him  in  his  see,  from  which  it  was 
his  opinion,  he  had  been  unlawfully  expelled.  Ethelred 
(who  had  now  abdicated  in  favour  of  CcEnred  and  had 
retired  to  a  monastery)  stood  his  friend,  and  advised  com- 
pliance with  the  wishes  of  the  pope;  but  Aldfrid  scorned 
to  receive  him'^,  and  if  we  are  to  believe  the  bishop's  bio- 
grapher, expressed  in  no  very  measured  terms  his  contempt 
for  papal  rescripts.!  But  it  cost  him  dear,  his  death  follow- 
ing shortly  after,  which  Bede  insinuates  was  a  judgment 
upon  him  for  this  act  of  contumacy  .J  This  was  about  the 
year  704.  Again,  there  exists  a  letter  addressed  to  Pope 
Leo  III.  by  the  bishops  and  clergy  of  England,  protesting 
against  the  necessity  of  their  metropolitan  spending  his  la- 
bour in  travelling  to  Rome  for  the  pall,  or  his  money  in  pur- 

*  Bede's  Eccl.  Hist.  447.  t  Reynolds,  31. 

t  Bede,  447. 

6* 


66  REFORMATION  IN    ENGLAND. 

chasing  it,  when  the  early  records  of  the  church  went  to 
prove  that  some  archbishops  had  not  received  it  at  all,  and 
that  none  had  bought  it  at  a  price;  happy  times,  they  add, 
in  which  the  apostolic  see  did  not  expose  itself  to  the  re- 
proach which  St.  Peter  cast  on  Simon,  "  Thy  money  pe- 
rish with  thee."*  This  was  about  the  year  798.  The 
pope,  therefore,  was  ready  to  rush  in  with  the  first  opportu- 
nity, and  at  length,  one  presented  itself.  William  request- 
ed the  assistance  of  Rome  to  remodel  the  English  church 
after  the  great  Norman  revolution;  his  request,  we  may  be 
sure,  was  readily  complied  vi^ith.  Certain  cardinal  priests 
are  despatched,  who  endeavour  to  approximate  Rome  and 
Canterbury,  by  preaching  on  behalf  of  the  pope,  the  pall, 
personal  homage  to  the  apostolic  see,  and  the  right  of  inves- 
titure to  bishoprics;  and  though  efforts  are  made  to  saddle 
upon  England  a  permanent  representative  of  the  pope,  under 
the  title  of  Legate  (a  name  perhaps  derived  from  the  mili- 
tary officer  whom  the  Roman  emperors  used  to  send  out  to 
govern  a  province),  this  latter  proposal  is  for  the  present 
abortive.  In  some  of  the  other  measures  they  appear  to  have 
sped  better;  for  we  may  observe  that  on  the  demise  of  each 
archbishop  successively  (with  few  exceptions)  there  now 
occurs  a  memorandum  of  a  vacancy  in  the  see  of  twelve 
months  or  more,  during  which  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  the  metropolitan  elect  was  making  application  to  Rome 
personally,  or  by  proxy,  for  confirmation  of  his  appoint- 
ment and  peaceable  possession  of  the  mitre.t  Sometimes 
this  interval  is  protracted  to  several  years,  the  right  of  in- 
vestiture being  in  such  cases  most  likely  a  bone  of  conten- 
tion between  the  king  and  the  pope,  and  the  subject  not  ad- 
mitting of  a  more  speedy  adjustment.  Indeed,  this  was  a 
question  of  great  intricacy;  one,   iti  which  the  most  dispas- 

*  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  461.  f  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  6.  et  seq. 


RIGHT  OF  INVESTITURE.  67 

sionate  lookers  on  must  have  found  it  difficult  to  strike  a  ba- 
lance between  the  evil  and  the  good.  If,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  pope  was  permitted  to  present  to  the  sees  and  abbeys  of 
England,  he  would  fill  the  country,  perhaps  with  foreigners, 
certainly  with  creatures  of  his  own,  ^nd  then  what  was  to 
become  of  the  independence  of  the  national  church?  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  king  presented,  rapacious  as  the  early 
Norman  monarchs  were,  he  might  make  a  profit  of  his  pri- 
vilege, put  up  the  sacred  offices  to  auction,  as  King  Rufus 
actually  did;*  or  retain  in  his  own  hands,  as  that  same  ty- 
rant was  found  to  have  done  at  the  day  of  his  death,  an 
archbishopric  of  Canterbury,  the  bishoprics  of  Winchester 
and  Salisbury,  together  with  a  dozen  good  abbeys,  and 
then  what  was  to  become  of  the  very  existence  of  the  na- 
tional church?!  It  was  probably  these  latter  considerations 
that  induced  Archbishop  Anselm,  a  sincere  friend  and  well- 
wisher,  as  it  should  seem,  to  his  church,  to  throw  it  more 
effectually  into  the  hands  of  the  pope,  by  procuring  from 
him  an  injunction  that  no  prelate,  abbot  or  priest,  should 
receive  investiture  of  any  dignity  ecclesiastical  whatsoever 
from  a  layman.  King  Henry,  perhaps  unwilling  to  risk  a 
rupture  at  one  and  the  same  time  with  his  church  at  home, 
with  a  strong  faction  of  his  nobles  who  supported  it,  and 
gave  evidence  of  their  intention  to  do  so  with  spirit  by  the 
oath  they  subsequently  imposed  upon  Stephen*,  and  with 
the  papal  power  now  grown  formidable,  gave  way,  and 
granted  to  the  cathedrals  and  collegiate  churches  of  his 
realm  license  to  elect  any  of  their  own  body  into  abbey  or 
bishopric,  thereby  waiving  a  right  which  by  an  act  of  usur- 
pation the  kings  had  assumed  since  the  conquest,  of  con- 
ferring mitres  and  monasteries  on  whom  they  would. §  Thus 

*  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  6.  t  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  272. 

X  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  284.  §  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  274. 


68  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  authority  of  the  Saxon  synod,  in  which  the  bishops  and 
clergy  combined  with  the  king  for  ecclesiastical  elections, 
was  in  some  measure  restored,  and  though  certainly  less  inde- 
pendent and  absolute  than  formerly,*  it  was  something  that  it 
had  again  a  voice:  at  present,  it  should  appear,  that  the  the- 
ory of  ecclesiastical  appointments  was  this,  the  chapters 
elected,  the  king  approved,  the  pope  confirmed  the  choice.! 
But  there  were  here  too  many  parties  having  too  many  con- 
flicting interests  to  admit  of  perpetual  harmony.  Accord- 
ingly the  struggle  begins;  and  now  the  pope  has  his  right 
of  investiture;  and  now  the  king  cripples  it  by  suspending 
the  temporalities  of  the  see  during  its  vacancy,  and  leaving 
his  holiness  nothing  to  present  unto  but  the  bare  episcopal 
office;!  and  now  he  accepts  the  king's  candidate  to  the  re- 
jection of  him  whom  the  chapter  had  unanimously  cho- 
sen;§  and  now  again  he  seems  to  take  upon  himself  the 
sole  responsibility  of  the  appointment  on  the  principle 
that  "  my  name  is  Leo."||  On  the  whole,  the  strife 
issued  out  as  it  was  natural  it  should,  in  the  despot;  the  pope 
prevailed;  his  legate  (for  by  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Henry 
I.  a  legate  had  established  a  right  of  road  into  England)  was 
ever  upon  the  watch;  and  the  opposition  of  the  national  cler- 
gy, which  was  considerable,  to  the  advances  of  this  active  ' 
emissary,  was  taken  off  by  identifying  the  legate  with  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  himself.  This  was  a  master- 
stroke of  policy;  it  at  once  removed  the  leader  of  the  insur- 
gents, and  grafting  the  unfounded  pretensions  of  the  legate 
on  the  acknowledged  rights  of  the  archbishop,  made  him 
in  his  latter  character  the  best  of  stalking  horses  for  papal 
encroachments.     When  the  high  spirit  of  the  clergy  would 

*  Bede's  Eccl.  Hist.  352.  400.        t  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  6.  71. 
X  Ang].  Sacr.  i.  44.  48.  §  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  42. 

1)  Angl.  Sacr.  i.  43. 


FUNCTIONS  OF  LEGATE.  69 

have  tempted  them  to  resist  him  in  one  capacity,  their  sense 
of  what  was  due  to  him  in  his  other  capacity  kept  them  in 
check;  to  abstract  the  legate  from  the  metropolitan  was  im- 
possible; the  functions  of  the  two  were  in  constant  conflict; 
and  it  must  have  been  felt  that  there  was  a  dragon  the  church 
which  was  pulling  it  in  pieces.  He,  however,  as  the  pope's 
representative,  continued  to  convene  provincial  synods  and 
preside  in  them;  to  exercise  all  manner  of  jurisdiction;  to 
withdraw  from  the  cognisance  of  parliament  ecclesiastical 
grievances;  to  interfere  with  the  diocesan  courts,  and  excite  the 
just  jealousy  of  the  bishops  by  supplanting  them  in  some  of 
their  most  ancient  and  indisputable  rights.  Questions  touch- 
ing the  probate  of  wills,  administrations,  appeals,  visitations, 
and  the  like,  afforded  but  too  much  opportunity  for  collision, 
and  the  church  was  scandalised  by  a  contest,  rather  for  the 
fees  than  for  the  faith.*  Thus  did  the  establishment  suffer 
both  from  within  and  from  without:  from  within,  by  the 
decay  of  all  discipline;  from  without,  by  the  forfeiture  of  all 
respect. 

Nor  was  this  all.  Nothing  contributes  so  much  to  dis- 
gust the  public  mind  with  the  existing  order  of  things  as 
the  faulty  administration  of  justice.  Let  the  people  have 
justice  purely,  unexpensively,  and  expeditiously  adminis- 
tered, and  what  chiefly  concerns  them  in  the  government  of 
a  country  is  obtained.  "  I  crave  the  law,"  is  the  demand  of 
any  stout-hearted  nation,  and  having  gained  this  object, 
they  are  at  peace.  Now  the  ancient  county-court  was 
simple  and  satisfactory  in  its  practice — it  was  the  natural 
growth  of  the  soil;  suited  to  the  wants  of  Englishmen,  and 
consecrated  by  immemorial  usage.  The  judiciary  system 
introduced  by  the  pope,  on  the  other  hand,  into  the  diocesan 
courts,  of  which  rescripts  from  Rome    and  (subsequently 

*  Reynolds,  41.  48,  49. 


70  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

when  the  books  of  the  civil  law  had  been  discovered)  the 
old  Roman  jurisprudence  were  the  basis,  was  tedious, 
cosUy,  and  what  was  perhaps  worse  than  all,  novel.* 
Even  of  those  who  had  to  administer  it,  there  were  some 
who  did  it  reluctantly,  strove  to  evade  it,  and  adopted  the 
trial  by  jury  instead  of  the  subtleties  of  the  Roman  law; 
but  these  innovations  were  accounted  heretical,  and;  prohibi- 
tions were  issued  against  Grosthead,  Bishop  of  Lincoln, 
and  others,  who  had  the  courage  or  temerity  to  attempt 
them.t  Still  it  was  one  thing  to  silence,  and  another  to 
satisfy.  Much  inconvenience  was  felt  by  the  people  in  con- 
sequence of  "  the  law's  delay,"  and  a  proportionate  desire 
was  created  for  a  reformation  of  the  system.  The  rolls  of 
parliament,  from  Edward  III.  to  Henry  VIIL,  present  nu- 
merous complaints  to  the  Commons  on  the  difficulties  at- 
tending the  probate  of  wills;  and  such  there  well  might  be, 
when,  in  addition  to  the  parties  already  mentioned,  the 
bishop  and  the  legate,  each  of  whom  asserted  his  own  ex- 
clusive right  of  probate,  and  referred  his  cause  to  the  pope, 
a  third  party  stepped  in,  under  the  title  of  legatus  e  latere, 
or  special  legate,  who  in  his  turn,  contested  the  privileges 
of  the  legatus  natus,  and  urged  his  own  superior  claim  to 
the  cognisance  of  all  testamentary  matters.^  Nor  were  the 
grievances  touching  property  more  onerous  than  those  which 
regarded  domestic  relationship.  The  regulations  of  mar- 
riage were  intricate  and  vexatious:  whilst  it  was  maintained 
to  be  in  itself  a  sacrament,  and  so  indissoluble,  the  prohibi- 
ted degrees  were  studiously  multiplied,  and  thereby  a  pre- 
tence was  furnished  for  a  dissolution  whenever  it  should  be 
the  pope's  pleasure  to  pronounce  it.  Thus  did  he  hold  in 
his  hands,  and  determine  by  his  legate,  or  by  the  dean  of  the 


*  Reynolds,  36.  f  Reynolds,  38. 

t  Reynolds,  68. 


LEGAL  ABUSES.  71 

arches,  the  legate's  deputy,  the  legitimac)^  of  children,  and 
the  succession  of  families,  separating  those  whom  no  man 
had  a  right  to  put  asunder,  and  giving  his  sanction  to  unions 
which  nature  and  Scripture  forbade. 

The  progress  of  a  cause,  slow,  of  necessity  by  reason  of 
the  forms  of  the  court,  and  the  contradictions  of  the  canons, 
was  still  further  and  more  seriously  impeded  by  appeals.  By 
these,  episcopal  decisions  were  set  at  nought;  and  the  more 
effectually  as  the  court  of  the  arches  was  invested  with  the 
power  of  suspending  the  process  of  the  ordinary  till  the 
pope's  answer  should  be  received,  and  often  no  doubt,  till 
one  or  both  of  the  litigants  would  be  ready  to  exclaim  with 
King  Henry,  whose  divorce  presents,  in  its  seven  years' 
details,  a  splendid  example  of  the  grievances  under  which 
numbers  of  his  subjects  were  suflering,  with  more  right  on 
their  side — 


I  abhor 


This  dilatory  sloth  and  tricks  of  Rome." 

It  would  be  a  long  labour,  and  one,  perhaps  of  no  great 
interest  to  the  majority  of  our  readers  after  all,  to  follow 
out  this  branch  of  our  subject  in  all  its  extent.  Suffice  it, 
however,  not  to  have  passed  over  in  silence  so  fruitful  a 
source  of  popular  discontent  as  abuses  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  law — abuses  which  could  fail  of  alienating  mul- 
titudes from  a  church  with  which  they  were  identified.  It 
is  not,  perhaps,  a  circumstance  less  worthy  of  notice  from 
being  often  overlooked,  and  whilst  the  more  obvious  evils 
which  clamorously  demanded  redress  are  set  forth  to  the 
full,  one  which  touched  men  in  their  property,  their  affec- 
tions— which  met  them  in  the  affairs  of  "  this  working-day 
world"  at  every  turn — is  noticed  casually,  or  not  at  all. 

There  may  be  those,  indeed,  who  think  that  to  dwell  at 


72  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

SO  much  length  on  the  secondary  and  more  disrgaceful 
causes  of  the  Reformation,  is  to  detract  from  the  character 
of  that  great  event,  and  to  tarnish  its  lustre;  but  they  who 
regard  God's  enemies  as  his  instruments  will  not  so  account 
of  it.  They  will  see  in  the  course  given  to  those  beggarly 
elements  the  same  superintending  hand  that  wrought  the 
nourishment  of  Jacob's  household  out  of  the  sin  of  Jacob's 
sons;  so  that  whilst  they  wickedly  sold  Joseph  to  the 
Ishmaelites,  God  mercifully  made  it  for  good,  sending 
him  before  them,  by  this  means,  to  preserve  them  a  pos- 
terity in  the  earth,  and  to  save  their  lives  by  a  great  de- 
liverance. They  will  see  in  it  the  same  power  at  work 
that  shaped  the  cruel  decree  of  Pharaoh  for  the  children  to 
be  cast  into  the  river  into  an  easy  provision  for  bringing  up 
Moses  in  the  royal  household,  and  thus  fitting  him  to  be  the 
teacher  and  leader  of  Israel,  by  introducing  him  into  all  the 
wisdom  of  the  Egyptians.  They  will  see  in  it  the  same 
that  achieved  the  salvation  of  the  world  itself,  by  Caiphas 
who  declared  that  it  was  expedient  for  one  man  to  die  for 
the  people,  and  by  the  wretches  that  cried,  "  Crucify  him! 
crucify  him!" 


73 


CHAPTER  IV. 

MONASTERIES. THEIR  USURPATION    OF    THE  RIGHTS  OF  THE 

CLERGY. IMPROPRIATIONS. EVILS  OF  THE  SYSTEM. 

With  the  causes  already  enumerated  as  those  which 
worked  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Catholic  church,  there 
conspired  the  ignorance  and  immoral  lives  of  the  clergy.  A 
system  of  celibacy  upon  compulsion  was  sure  to  produce  a 
system  of  profligacy.  Yet  the  disgusting  catalogue  of  offences 
alleged  against  the  regulars,  by  the  visiters  of  the  monas- 
teries, ought,  perhaps,  to  be  received  with  some  caution. 
The  commissioners  were  not  unprejudiced  judges.  They 
knew  full  well,  that  the  king,  their  master,  was  determined 
on  the  dissolution  of  the  religious  houses,  and  that,  at  all 
events,  a  quarrel  was  to  be  picked.  Bad  enou2:h  those 
houses  probably  were,  but  had  they  been  better,  their  doom 
was  sealed.  The  preamble  of  the  act  for  dissolving  the 
smaller  ones  on  pretence  of  their  corruption,  proclaims  that 
the  greater  were  spared  as  being  regular,  devout,  and  praise- 
worthy; yet  we  know  what  followed.*  The  nunnery  of 
Godstow,  in  Oxfordshire,  was  actually  reported  as  exem- 
plary; it  was  the  school  to  which  all  the  young  gentlewo- 
men of  the  country  resorted.  Their  friends  pleaded  v/ith 
the  king  to  spare  it,  the  inquisitors  seconded  their  petition, 
— but  they  obtained  for  it  no  other  boon  than  that  it  should 
be  eaten  up  last.  Voluntary  confessions  of  guilt,  which 
accompanied  the  surrender  of  the  abbeys,  are  the  mere 
suicidal  confessions  of  a  man  upon  the  wheel,  proof  of  no- 

*  27  Hen.  8.  c.  28.     Stat,  of  the  Realm,  iii.  576. 


74  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

thing  but  of  the  pain  or  the  hope  which  extorted  them.   The 
monks  found  that  they  could  not  save  their  ship,  and  there- 
fore, they  compromised,  by  stripping  themselves   naked, 
and  trying  for  a  plank.     Had  they  stood  upon  their  own 
innocence,  they  would  have  condemned  the  king,  and  still 
lost  their  estates;  did  they  allow  their  guilt,  they  screened 
his  rapacity,  and  received  a  see,  a  living,  or  a  pension.  The 
courtiers  were  interested  in  swelling  the  cry  that  such  men 
were  not  fit  to  live.      They,  like  the  visiters,  themselves 
hoped  for  a  share  of  the  golden  eggs  when  they  should 
have  succeeded  in  killing  the  hen.  "  Wherefore  this  waste?" 
was  their  pretence;  but  they  carried  a  bag  of  their  own, 
which  was  to  be  filled  out  of  their  neighbour's  pocket;  and, 
whatever  might  be  the  sin  of  sacrilege,  "  tithe  corn,"  thought 
they,  "  makes  very  good  bread."     Here  is  no  attempt  or 
desire  to  defend  these  miserable  monks  in  the  teeth  of  damn- 
ing facts — and  some  such,  ho  doubt,  there  were  to  testify 
against  very  many  of  the  monastic  abuses — but  it  is  nothing 
but  justice,  and  the  practice  of  every  equitable  court,  to 
weigh  the  characters  and  prejudices,  and  private  interests 
of  the  witnesses,  when  they  would  swear  away  a  man's  life, 
substance,  and  good  name;   and,  in  the  present  instance, 
it  is  fair  to  adopt  the  same  rule,  were   it  only  out  of  consi- 
deration to  the  many  sincere,  and  humble,  and  righteous 
servants  of  God,  that  those  religious  houses  contained  within 
their  walls,  even  in  the  midst  of  an  adulterous  and  sinful  gene- 
ration; the  faithful  among  the  faithless;  the  many  who  had 
fled  thither  for  shelter  from  the  sorrows  of  life;  the  ambitious, 
with  blithed  hopes  and  a  broken  spirit,  the  gay  with  the 
experience  of  the  wise  man  that  all  under  the  sun  was  vanity; 
the  forlorn,  whom  the  world  had  abandoned,  and  lefttodvift 
upon  the  rocks;  the  disappointed,  whose  course  of  true  love 
might  not  have  run  smooth;  these,  and  a  thousand  other 
malignant  influences,  contributed  their  victims  to  those  "po- 


IMPROPRIATIONS.  75 

pulous  solitudes;"  persons  having  now  no  other  desire  than 
to  pass  the  time  of  their  sojourning  here  In  piety,  in  privacy, 
and  in  peace.      This  is  a  class  to  which  it  is  impossible  to 
refuse  our  sympathy,  and  whom   it  would  be  ungenerous 
and  unjust  to  confound  with  the  swarm  of  lazy,  sensual, 
unlettered  drones  among  whom  it  was  their  unhappy  lot  to 
live,  and  whom  the  shock  of  the  Reformation  dispersed. 
Exemption  from  episcopal  visitation,  and  consequently  from 
any  inspection  whatever,  was  the  beginning  of  the  evil. 
This  privilege  of  the  monasteries  proved  their  poison:  it 
was  a  short-sighted  policy  of  the  pope  to  hide  them  from 
the  eye  of  the  secular  clergy,  whose  jealousy  would  have 
acted  as  a  wholesome  stimulant  to  the  detection  and  cor- 
rection   of   abuses.      But  the  seculars  he    systematically 
slighted,  and  his  iniquity  eventually  found  him  out.     Then, 
again,  came  upon  them  an  evil  spirit  which  led   them  to 
grasp  at  the  possession  of  all  the  benefices  in  the  country. 
This   was    another  effort   to  depress  the  working  clergy, 
which  the  pope  encouraged,  but  which,  like  the  former, 
was,  in  the  end,  most  injurious  to  his  own  authority,  by 
bringing  the  clergy  into  contempt,  and  opening  the  eyes  of 
the  people,  to  the  covetousness  of  the  monks.     The  sys- 
tem of   impropriations,   which  began   with  William  the 
Conqueror,  grew  so  rapidly  that,  in  the  course   of  three 
centuries,  more  than  a  thirdj^part  of  the  benefices  in  Eng- 
land became  such,*  and  those  the  richest,  for  the  whiter 
the  cow  the  surer  was  it  to  go  to  the  altar,  and  by  the  time 
of  the  Reformation,  there  was  added  another  third.t     An  at- 
tempt was  made  by  the  legislature  to  stay  the  evil,  and  the 
statute  of  mortmain  was  passed  in  the  reign  of  Edward  I., 
whereby  it  was  enacted,  that  "  no  person,  religious  or  other, 
should  presume  to  buy  or  sell,  or  under  any  colour  of  dona- 

*  Kennet  on  Impropriations,  25.  t  Ibid.  405. 


76  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

tion,  lease,  or  other  title,  to  receive  any  lands  or  tenements, 
or  by  any  act  of  invention  to  appropriate  them,  under  pain 
of  forfeiture  of  them."*  But  the  statute  was  evaded  by 
royal  dispensations,  and  the  mischief  grew.  Even  the 
pope  himself  took  alarm  {pavet  ipse  sacerdos);  and  Alex- 
ander, at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  writes  to  the  Bishop 
of  Worcester  to  admit  no  man  to  a  vicarage  on  presentation 
of  the  monks,  till  they  had  assigned  him,  on  the  instant, 
such  a  portion  of  income  as  would  suffice  for  the  episcopal 
dues,  and  for  the  competent  maintenance  of  the  minister;! 
but  this  decree  they  set  at  naught  by  not  presenting  at  all, 
either  serving  the  churches  by  stipendiary  curates,  or  (which 
was  the  readier  way)  leaving  them  altogether  unserved.^ 
By-and-by  the  example  of  the  monasteries  was  followed  by 
the  chantries,  colleges,  hospitals,  and  nunneries;  these,  in 
their  turn,  learned  the  art  of  procuring  impropriations;§ 
nay,  even  corporations,  transforming  themselves,  by  a  legal 
fiction,  into  religious  societies,  did  the  same;  for  before 
King  Henry  VIII.  there  seems  to  have  been  no  precedent 
in  England  for  a  mere  layman  to  be  an  impropriator.]!  The 
monks,  however,  had  peculiar  facilities  for  the  accumulation 
of  livings.  Their  influence  with  some  neighbouring  lord 
of  a  manor  would  often  win  him  to  make  over  the  church 
on  his  estate,  and  the  tithes  with  which  it  might  be  en- 
dowed, to  their  own  abbey;  they,  meanwhile,  undertaking 
to  provide  for  the  fulfilment  of  the  ecclesiastical  duties  be- 
longing to  it.  Then,  again,  if  they  could  not  beg  they 
could  buy,  often  the  parish  itself,  as  well  as  the  benefice; 
or  where  the  purchase  was  more  circumscribed,  the  pope, 
ever  their  friend,  would  sometimes  grant  them  the  privilege 
oj  non-payment  of  tithes  to  the  extent  of  such  estate,  to 

*  Kennet  on  Impropriations,  97. 

t  Ryves's  Poore  Vicar's  Plea,  15.  t  Ibid.  21. 

§  Ibid.  7.  II  Kennet,  35. 


ORIGIN  OF  VICARAGES.  77 

the  great  injury  of  the  clergymen,  when  it  happened  to  be 
considerable.     Thus  rectories  were  reduced  to  vicarages; 
the  greater  tithes  going  to  the  abbey  fund,  the  small  tithes 
left  as  a  miserable  stipend  (often  not  more  than  a  sixteenth 
part  of  the  revenue  of  the  benefice*)  to  the  minister,  who 
took  the  monks'  labouring  oar  under  the  title  of  vicarius. 
Thus  originated  that  divorce  between  the  property  of  the 
parish  church  and  the  minister  of  it,  which  continues  in 
most  instances  of  vicarages  to  this  day;  and  thus  it  came  to 
pass  that  town  livings  (contrary  to  all  reason)  are  at  present 
of  all  others,  the  poorest,  less  than  the  usual  pittance  of  en- 
dowment having  been  leffto  them  by  the  considerate  monks, 
who  reckoned,  and  perhaps  rightly  reckoned,  in  the  days 
when  masses  were  said,  that  a  large  population  would  sup- 
ply by  fees    alone   an   adequate    provision  for  the   vicar. 
Meanwhile,  the  people  were  disgusted  with  this  gross  and 
cruel  invasion  of  the  rights  of  their  pastors;  and  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  monasteries    read   themselves  in   amidst 
reproaches  loud   and  deep,  of  the  bystanders.!     But  they 
were  not  thin-skinned.      They  prepared,  however,  a  sop 
for  Cerberus,  by  exacting  with  litde  rigour  the  small  tithes, 
or,  in  some  cases,  by  accepting  an  easy  composition  instead 
of  them;  hoping,  by  such  modus  {decimandi)  to  purchase 
the  more  cheerful  and  prompt  payment  of  the  great  tithes, 
which  was  their  afiair;  and  not  at  all  uneasy   because  the 
propitiation  happened  to  be  made  at  the  vicar's  expense.it^ 
Their   only  remaining  concern    was    to    find  some  "  Sir 
Johns"  (as  the  poor  clergy  were  called  before  the  Reforma- 
tion,)  sometimes  with   an    honourable    adjunct   of   "lack 
Latin, "§  or  '*  mumble-matinsH,"  or  "  babbling  Sir  Johns, "^ 

*  Ryves's  Poore  Vicar's  Plea,  145.         t  Monast.  Anglic,  i.  658. 
t  Kennel,  59.     §  Strype's  Annals,  177.  Latimer's  Sermons,  ii.  243 
II  Strype's  Annals,  181. 
IT  Wordsworth's  Eccles.  Biog.  i.  265,  note. 

7* 


78  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

or  "  blind  Sir  Johns,"*  as  it  might  be,  who  wore  just 
qualified  according  to  the  letter  of  the  law,  to  stand  in  the 
gap;  mass-priests,  who  could  read  their  breviaries,  and  no 
more — for  in  those  days  men  seem  to  have  received  ordina- 
tion without  any  adequate  examination  either  as  to  learning 
or  charactert — persons  of  the  lowest  of  the  people,  with 
all  the  gross  habits  of  the  class  from  which  they  sprung; 
loiterers  on  the  ale-house  bench;:}:  dicers,  scarce  able  to  say 
by  rote  their  Pater-noster,  often  actually  unable  to  repeat 
the  commandments;§  divines  every  way  fitted  to  provoke 
the  75th  canon,  which  was  no  doubt,  in  the  first  instance 
levelled  against  them.||  Such  were  the  ministers  to  whom 
was  consigned  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  parishes  of 
England  before  the  Reformation;  with  what  effect,  the  igno- 
rance, the  superstition,  the  vices  which  then  spread  themselves 
over  the  whole  country,  sufficiently  testify.  A  feature  or 
two  of  the  times,  such  as  have  been  preserved  to  us,  are 
here  off'ered  to  the  reader,  not,  to  be  sure,  always  drawn  by 
a  very  friendly  hand,  but  still,  in  all  probability,  tolerably 
faithful.  The  prayers  of  the  church,  being  in  Latin,  tended 
litde  or  nothing  to  edification.  Preaching  there  was  scarce 
any.  Quarterly  sermons  appear  to  have  been  prescribed  to 
the  clergy,  but  not  to  have  been  insisted  upon;  for  though 
mass  was  on  no  account  left  unsaid  for  a  single  Sunday,  ser- 
mons might  be  omitted  for  twenty  Sundays  together,  and 

*  Jewel's  Sermon  on  Haggai.  i.  2. 

t  See  Dean  Colet's  Serm.  in  Burnet's  Reform,  iii.28.  fol.  The  original 
Latin  sermon  is  given  in  the  appendix  to  Knight's  Life  of  Colet.  The 
passage  alluded  to  is  in  p.  281 . 

t  Strype's  Cranmer,  456.  §  Ibid.  217,  218. 

II  ColetVSermon,  printed  in  1511,  speaks  of  law, — quae  prohibentne 
clericus  sit  publicus  lusor;  and  of  laws,  quae  prohibent  clericis  frequen- 
taretabernas,  281. 


CHURCH  BEFORE  REFORMATION.  79 

nobody  be  blamed.*  The  unpreaching  prelate  is  honest 
Latimer's  by-word.  Indeed,  as  the  Reformation  approached, 
as  the  stirring  of  the  foundations  began  to  make  itself  felt; 
to  be  a  preacher  was  to  be  suspected  of  being  a  heretic. f 
The  friars,  to  be  sure,  were  not  dumb  dogs,  but  they  barked 
to  little  purpose,  in  a  manner  to  prove  rather  that  they  were 
hungry  than  watchful;  their  discourses  having  for  their  ob- 
ject rather  to  fill  their  own  wallets  than  satisfy  their  hear- 
er's wants,  and  if  not  occupied  with  uncharitable  invectives 
against  other  ecclesiastics,  a  tissue  of  fables  and  old  wives' 
tales.  J  Catechising,  in  the  protestant  sense  of  the  term,  was 
unknown  or  unpractised.  When,  indeed,  it  was  perceived 
how  powerful  a  weapon  it  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Reform- 
ers, steps  were  taken  at  the  council  of  Trent  for  putting 
forth  what  was  called  a  catechism.  But  the  Trent  cate- 
chism was  composed  avowedly  for  the  instruction  of  the  pa- 
rish priests,  not  for  the  use  of  children,  to  whom  it  was  not 
at  all  adapted;  and,  after  all,  the  gross  ignorance  of  the  for- 
mer must  have  made  it  a  dead  letter  to  most  of  them;  utter- 
ly unintelligible  so  long  as  it  remained  in  the  learned  lan- 
guage in  which  it  was  written,  and  if  translated,  (as  it  was, 
into  Italian,  French,  German  and  Polish,  whether  into  En- 
glish we  know  not,)  still  containing  too  much  special  plead- 
ing, too  obvious  an  anxiety  for  secular  interests,  too  mani- 
fest an  apprehension  that  the  "  craft  was  in  danger,"  too 
much  doubtful  or  ridiculous  theology,  to  stand  against  the 
strong  b'ows  of  the  men  of  the  new  learning.  The  Church 
Catechism,  on  the  other  hand,  writ  in  our  own  mother 
tongue,  brief,  and,  on  the  whole,  of  admirable  simplicity;  a 
manual  which,  elementary  as  it  may  be  thought,  no  compe- 
tent judge  can  examine  without  seeing  that  its  authors  must 

*  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  182.  t  Ibid.  87. 

t  Burnet's  Hist,  of  Reformation,  i.  316.  1st  ed.  fol. 


80  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

have  been  men  mighty  in  those  Scriptures,  whereof,  indeed, 
it  is  the  essence,  most  patiently  investigated,  and  most  skil- 
fully and  scrupulously  expressed;  this  wrought  so  effectual- 
ly, that  "  now"  (says  an  authority  of  the  second  year  of 
Elizabeth,  quoted  by  Strype)  "  a  young  child  of  ten  years 
old  can  tell  more  of  his  duty  towards  God  and  man  than  a 
man  of  their  bringing  up  can  do  in  sixty  or  eighty  years."* 
Nay,  of  the  Scriptures  even  the  more  learned  clergy  knew 
very  little,  the  universities  being  taken  up  with  popes'  laws 
and  schoolmen.  Indeed,  it  was  difficult  to  meet  with  a  copy 
of  the  Bible,  or  of  any  other  profitable  book  of  divinity  in 
these  seats  of  learning,  so  successfully  had  the  friars  bought 
them  all  up;  and  students,  we  are  told,  in  the  reign  of  Ed- 
ward III.  actually  withdrew  from  them  in  consequence,  and 
returned  to  their  own  homes;t  nor  does  the  study  of  the 
Scriptures  appear  to  have  had  a  chance  against  Scotus  and 
Aquinas  till  Dean  Colet  established  it  at  Oxford;  and,  about 
the  same  time,  George  Stafford,  at  Cambridge,  by  lectures 
on  the  books  of  Holy  Writ.|  The  people  at  large,  if  possi- 
ble, fared  worse.  They  were  debarred  from  all  knowledge 
of  their  Bibles,  either  by  the  language  in  which  they  were 
written  (for  copies  of  Wickliffe's  translation  were  scarce), 
or,  if  not,  by  the  price  at  which  they  were  sold;  the  cost  of 
Wickliffe's  New  Testament,  in  the  beginning  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  being  four  marks  and  forty  pence,  a  sum 
equal  to  2/.  16s.  3d,  of  present  money. §     Thus  the  multi- 


*  Strype's  Annals,  87. 

t  Strype's  Cranmer,  169.  Fox's  Acts  and  Mon.  i.  538.  Ed.  1631-32. 
Wordsworth's  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  287. 

X  Wordsworth's  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  306.  Knight's  Life  of  Dean  Colet, 
47.  53.  56.  Erasmus  supported  by  his  authority  the  new  system  of 
theology,  and  defended  his  friend  Colet  at  Cambridge. 

§  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  286,  note. 


IGNORANCE  OF  THE  PEOPLE.  81 

tude  knew  just  so  much  of  Scripture  history,  as  the  miracle 
plays  taught  them,  and  little  more.  To  these  burlesque 
and  indecent  caricatures  of  Holy  Writ  (though  it  is  fair  to 
say  not  so  intended)  the  idle  and  the  dissipated  were  the 
first  to  resort,  as  to  fairs  and  revels,  with  which  festivities, 
indeed,  they  ranked,  so  that,  had  they  been  better  worth  at- 
tention, it  is  probable  that  an  attendance  upon  them  would 
not  have  conduced  much  to  edification.  The  Sabbath  was 
rather  a  day  of  sports  and  pastimes  than  of  devotion  and 
instruction;  of  dancing,  shooting  with  the  bow,  and  practi- 
sing with  the  buckler;*  nor  were  these,  it  may  be  well 
imagined,  the  most  culpable  of  its  occupations.  The 
churches  were  profaned.  In  the  top  of  one  of  the  pin- 
nacles of  St.  Paul's  in  London  was  Lollard's  tower,  the 
prison,  and  often  the  grave  of  the  saints.  In  the  arches  of 
the  same  cathedral  were  the  ecclesiastical  courts,  of  which 
the  balance  was  not  always  the  balance  of  the  sanctuary, 
though  in  the  sanctuary  it  was  held.  In  the  spacious 
nave  M^as  the  exchange  for  the  merchants  (for  Sir  Tho- 
mas Gresham  had  not  yet  lived  to  remove  the  reproach), 
and  the  scene  of  all  the  brawlings  of  the  horse-fair.t  Pay- 
ments of  money  were  made  at  the  font;  and  the  crypt,  or 
under-ground  chapel,  in  which  the  early  mass  was  said,  was 
the  trysting-place  of  the  nightly  revellers  of  either  sex.ij: 

*  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  177. 

t  Shakspeare,  Second  Part  of  Henry  IV.  act.  i.  scene  2. 

«  Fal.     Where's  Bardolph? 

Page.     He's  gone  into  Smithfield  to  buy  your  worship  a  horse. 

"  Fal.    I  bought  him  in  PauVs,  and  he'll  buy  me  a  horse  in  Smith- 
field." 
See  also  Strype's  Annals,   227. 

t  Ibid.  227,  and  Queen  Elizabeth's  "  Proclamation  made  for  the 
reverend  usage  of  all  churches  and  churchyards,"  given  in  Strype's 
Life  of  Grindal,  56. 


82  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Nor  were  such  abuses  as  these  confined  to  London.     The 
house  of  God,  as  it  should  seem  from  the  homily  "  On  the 
right  Use  of  the  Church,"  was  too  generally  the  place  of 
rendezvous  for  such  as  loved  greetings  in  the  market  place, 
had  tales  to  tell,  or  business  to  transact;  and  the  devotions 
of  the  day  were  suffered  to  drag  on  like  Pharaoh's  chariots 
with  the  wheels  off,  whilst  many  of  the  congregation  were 
more  profitably  employed  (as  they  thought)  in  the  discus- 
sion of  farm  or  merchandize,  as  they  paced  to  and  fro  along 
its  aisles.     It  is  to  these  and  similar  acts  of  irreverence  that 
the  canons  have  respect  in  the  directions  they  give  to  church- 
wardens and  questmen — directions  which  a  change  in  the 
manners  of  the  times  has  rendered  obsolete  and  almost  un- 
intelligible;* and  it  may  be  reasonably  supposed,  that  in  the 
ordering  of  our  church  ceremonies,  and  in  the  composition 
of  our  church  service  itself,  the  principle  of  fully  and  fer- 
vently occupying  all  who  were  within  the  walls  in  their 
devotions  was  studiously  kept  in  sight  by  the  reformers; 
and  that  the  sacrifice  of  prayer  and  praise  should  no  longer 
be  considered  the  exclusive  office  of  the  priest,  as  it  had 
been  too  much  in  papal  times,  the  people  looking  on,  but 
that  every  member  should  be  called  upon  at  intervals,  and 
those  of  short  and  frequent  recurrence,  the  whole  service 
through,  to  testify,  by  lifting  up  his  voice  in  confession  or 
response,  that  he,  too,  had  a  lively  interest  in  the  common 
work  before  them,  of  besetting  God,  as  it  were,  in  a  round 
(so  the  quaint  old   Fuller  expresses  it),  and  not  suffering 
him  to  depart  till  he  had  blessed  them — hsec  vis  grata  Deo.'''' 
The  saints'  days  and  holidays,  again,  were  numerous,  even 
to  the  hinderance  of  a  harvest,  and  to  the  certain  and  per- 
petual encouragement  of  riot  and  revelry  throughout  the 
country .t  Taverns  and  ale-houses,  little  better  than  brothels, 

*  See  Canon  s,  xviii,  xix. 

t  Strype's  Cranmer,  56,  and  Latimer. 


NATKNAL  MANNERS  AND  SUPERSTITIONS.  83 

with  their  dishonest  games  of  cards,  dice,  backgammon, 
tennis,  foot-ball,  quoits,  drained  the  pockets  of  their  votaries, 
and  sent  them  to  rob  on  the  highway.  So  says  Sir  Thomas 
More,  who  might,  perhaps,  have  excepted  the  more  athletic 
sports  here  enumerated  from  his  anathema,  and  thereby 
have  rendered  it  more  effective.*  The  due  punishment  of 
the  culprits  was  rendered  difficult  by  the  places  of  refuge 
afforded  them  in  the  precints  of  religious  houses,  which 
were  the  thieves'  paradise;!  and  though  felons  of  all  kinds 
could  here  claim  sanctuary,  even  for  life,  so  that  they  would 
actually  sally  forth  by  night  to  rob  or  slay,  and  return  before 
day-break  to  their  asylum  within  the  rules  with  impunity, 
yet  to  the  poor  persecuted  Lollard  was  the  gate  of  mercy 
closed,  and  he  might  be  legally  pursued  even  unto  the  horns 
of  the  altar.l  The  friar,  meanwhile,  went  on  with  his 
mumpsimus.  His  most  constant  hearers  (so  profitable  was 
his  teaching)  were  at  a  loss  to  distinguish  between  the 
deadly  sins  and  the  ten  commandments;§  of  which  latter, 
indeed,  as  of  the  articles  of  the  belief  in  English,  the  people 
were  entirely  ignorant,  being  wholly  given  to  superstitions. || 
They  hastened  to  the  churches  for  holy  water,  of  which  the 
devil  was  said  to  be  afraid,  before  a  thunder-storm;^  fled  to 
St.  Rooke  in  time  of  pestilence;  in  an  ague,  to  St.  Pernel, 
or  master  John  Shorne;  being  Welshmen,  and  disposed  to 
take  a  purse,  they  besought  the  help  of  Darvel  Gathorne; 
if  a  wife  were  weary  of  her  husband,  she  betook  herself  to 
St.  Uncumber,**  they  repaired  to  the  wise  woman  to  recover 
what  they  had  lost,  or  to  be  recruited  from  a  sickness;  and 
addicted  themselves  with  all  their  might  to  magic,  sorcery, 

*  Utopia,  ed.  24mo.  73.  t  Latimer's  Serm.  i.  176. 
t  Wordsworth's  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  271. 

§  Latimer,  ii.  65.  H  Latimer,  ii.  189. 

IT  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  166.  **  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  166. 


84  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

charms,  and  the  black  art.*  The  grossest  pretensions 
which  indulgences  could  advance  were  swallowed;  and  not 
strained  at.  Relics,  carrying  imposture  on  their  very  face, 
("  lies,"  in  the  language  of  Scripture,)  were  kissed  with 
pious  credulity.  Pilgrimages  were  undertaken  in  the  spirit 
of  the  company  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  or  of  Ogygius  in 
his  journey  to  our  lady  of  Walsingham;t  and  yet  were 
reckoned  acts  that  would  be  accounted  to  the  parties  for 
righteousness:  and,  whilst  no  man  brought  his  gift  to  the 
altar  of  his  Saviour  in  Canterbury  cathedral  throughout  a 
whole  year,  offerings  were  made  at  the  shrine  of  St. 
Thomas  a  Becket  in  the  same  place,  and  during  the  same 
period,  to  the  amount  of  nearly  a  thousand  pounds. 
^  No  wonder  that  in  these  ages  of  darkness  doctrines  not 
found  in  the  word  of  God,  but  of  which  we  have  seen  that 
the  germ  existed  even  in  the  Saxon  church,  should  have 
shot  up  with  vigour  like  the  gourd  of  Jonah  in  the  night; 
or  that,  in  the  absence  of  Scripture  to  speak  for  itself,  the 
religion  of  Rome  (as  Latimer  observes)  should  have  passed 
for  it.it 

*  Latimer's  Serm.  ii.  24.  199. 

t  Erasmus,  Peregrinatio  Religionis  Ergo. 

t  Latimer,  Serm.  ii.  45. 


85 


CHAPTER  V. 

EARLY    REFORMERS. WALDENSES. WICKLIFFE. 

LOLLARDS. 

Meanwhile  a  little  leaven  was  at  work,  which  served 
still  to  keep  a  better  faith  alive;  a  little  salt  of  the  earth 
which  prevented  the  great  carcase  of  human  nature  from  of- 
fending.the  nostrils  of  its  Creator.  The  Almighty  has  been 
ever  wont  to  make  such  provision  for  the  continuance  of 
sound  doctrine.  Whilst  all  jflesh  was  corrupting  its  way, 
still  a  household  or  two  were  left  to  keep  his  name  from 
perishing,  and  to  rally  the  true  religion  again — an  Enos, 
an  Enoch,  or  a  Noah.  When  idolatry  had  once  more  spread 
itself  over  the  world,  almost  to  the  extinction  of  the  know- 
ledge of  the  Most  High,  a  [ew  chosen  vessels  were  left  to 
the  preservation  of  it  still — an  Abraham,  a  Lot,  a  Melchi- 
zedec,  a  Job.  Generations  rolled  on,  and  God  thought  fit 
to  act  on  a  greater  scale,  but  still  on  the  same  principle;  and 
the  Israelites  were  separated  from  mankind  as  a  peculiar 
people,  as  the  depositaries  of  the  creed  of  man;  and  their 
fortunes  were  so  shaped  as  to  occasion  their  dispersion 
amongst  the  Gentiles,  with  the  Bible  in  their  hearts,  and 
hands;  and  thus  were  they  made  the  channels  through  which 
the  will  and  works  of  God  were  communicated  to  those 
who  would  otherwise  have  sat  in  darkness;  and  to  this  ori- 
gin, perhaps,  rather  than  to  be  unassisted  efforts  of  natural 
reason,  is  to  be  referred  the  more  sublime  part  of  the  philo- 
sophy of  the  heathens.* 

*  See  the  very  learned  charge  of  Dr.  Waterland  upon  "  The  Wisdom 
of  the  Ancients  borrowed  from  Divine  Revelation,"  viii.  1.  et.  seq.  Oxf. 
8 


86  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

So  it  was,  in  a  degree,  during  the  times  of  papal  igno- 
rance; for  though  to  the  question,  which  the  Romanists 
taught  every  priest  that  could  scarce  read  his  breviary  to 
ask,  "  Where  was  the  religion  of  protestants  before  Luther?" 
it  was  sufficient  to  say,  as  it  was  said,  "  In  the  Bible;"  still 
even  in  the  darkest  times,  it  had  many  faithful  witnesses  to 
produce  besides,  and  both  in  individuals  and  in  whole  con- 
gregations might  even  then  be  read  the  eloquent  chapters 
of  the  good  man's  life.  Thus,  whilst  the  pope  was  grasp- 
ing at  universal  power,  and  the  monks  were  busy  in  second- 
ing his  efforts,  and  councils  were  giving  authority  to  abuses 
both  doctrinal  and  practical,  on  which  his  usurpation  was 
grafting  itself,  and  wars  were  waged  between  the  several 
ecclesiastical  orders,  to  the  ruin  of  that  which  is  the  key- 
stone of  the  gospel,  charity^  and  ignorance  was  becoming 
more  dense,  and  manners  more  profligate,  there  was  abiding 
amongst  the  recesses  of  the  Alps  a  race  of  hardy  moun- 
taineers, who  held  (as  they  still  hold  after  ages  of  poverty 
and  oppression)  the  essential  articles  of  the  reformed  faith, 
and  to  whom  it  had  been  apparendy  derived  from  the 
apostles  themselves: — Vaudois,  Valenses,  or  Waldenses, 
was  the  name  of  this  primitive  people,  dwelling  as  they  did 
in  the  valleys  of  the  Cottian  Alps — a  name  wlrich,  though  at 
first  like  that  of  Albigenses  and  Romanists,  having  a  refer- 
ence to  the  local  habitation  of  the  persons  who  bore  it, 
eventually  embraced  a  large  and  widely  scattered  sect 
which  professed  certain  religious  opinions,  and  on  more  oc- 
casions than  one  sealed  them  with  their  blood.  For  that 
they  took  their  title  or  origin  from  Peter  Waldo,  the  heretic 
of  Lyons,  as  the  catholics  pretend,  is  not  to  be  admitted. 
He  was  excommunicated  by  the  archbishop  of  that  place, 
in  1172,  and  is  not  mentioned  before  the  year  1160,  whereas 
there  is  evidence  that  the  Vaudois  existed  as  a  distinct  so- 
ciety at  least  half  a  century  earlier;  and  it  is  probable  that 


THE  VAUDOIS.  87 

the  Subalpini,  and  Paterines,  a  more  ancient  name  still, 
men  who  worshipped  the  God  of  their  fathers  after  a  man- 
ner which  the  church  of  Rome  called  heresy,  were  but  the 
same  Waldenses,  under  a  prior  designation.  Certain  it  is, 
that  no  shadow  of  proof  exists  of  Peter  Waldo  having 
ever  set  foot  in  Piedmont,  and  a  substantial  difference  may 
be  descried  between  his  followers  and  the  church  of  the 
Alps,  that  whilst  the  former  assumed  the  functions  of  the 
clerical  office  without  hesitation,  the  latter  constantly  and 
scrupulously  msisted  upon  a  regular  call  to  the  priesthood, 
and  imposition  of  hands.*  Indeed,  the  episcopal  form  of 
church  government  was  faithfully  preserved  among  them, 
till  poverty,  aggravated  by  a  dreadful  pestilence  in  the  early 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  threw  them  for  resources 
upon  Switzerland,  which  very  naturally  sent  them,  together 
with  clerical  recruits,  (for  only  two  out  of  the  thirteen  barbes 
or  pastors  had  been  left  alive,)  her  liturgy,  her  presbyterian 
constitution,  and  her  cold  and  unattractive  ritual. f  Among 
many  of  their  tenets  to  which  their  enemies  bear  witness, 
we  find  that  they  gave  no  credit  to  modern  miracles,  rejected 
extreme  unction,  held  offering  for  the  dead  as  nothiug  worth 
except  to  the  priest,  neglected  the  festivals,  denied  the  doc- 
trines of  transubstantiation,  purgatory,  and  invocation  of 
saints,  and  held  the  church  of  Rome  (not  an  uncommon 
opinion  in  the  thirteenth  century:}^)    to  be   the  woman  in 

*  See  Alix's  Churches  of  Piedmont,  c.  24. 

t  See  Gilly's  Researches  among  the  Vaudois,  76.,  and  his  Second 
Visit,  219.  It  appears  that  the  several  liturgies  of  Geneva,  Neufchatel 
and  Lausanne  are  used  at  present;  but  that  of  Geneva  by  the  majority 
of  the  pastors.  On  comparing  the  brief  sketch  of  this  service  (given 
by  Mr.  Gilly  as  the  one  of  La  Torre)  'w'\\h  the  Geneva  "  Forme  of 
Common  Praires,  made  by  Master  John  Calvyne,"  we  may  conjecture 
that  the  latter  is  in  a  great  measure  retained. 

t  See  Dante's  Purgatorio,  c.  xvi.  xxxii.     Petrarc.  Son.  196. 


88  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

scarlet  of  the  Revelations.  From  La  Nobla  Legon,  a  cer- 
tain poem  of  their  own,  of  unsuspected  authority  and  very 
ancient  date,  for  it  was  written  about  the  year  1100,  we 
may  further  gather  in  addition  to  the  particulars  already 
given,  that  the  commandments  were  taught  by  them;  not 
excepting  that  against  idols,  and  the  worship  of  the  Trinity, 
though  without  a  word  in  favour  of  the  Virgin.  Slander- 
ous tongues  would  indeed  "  have  done  them  to  death;" — 
things  which  they  knew  not  were  wantonly  and  wickedly 
laid  to  their  charge;  many,  of  the  same  kind,  urged  m  the 
same  spirit,  and  with  the  same  regard  to  consistency,  as 
the  charges  objected  to  the  first  Christians  by  the  heathens 
of  old  time.  They  were  dissolute  libertines,  and  they  were 
ascetic  precisians;  they  used  the  Lord's  Prayer  only,  and 
yet  they  prayed  at  greater  or  less  length  seven  times  a  day; 
they  permitted  laymen  to  consecrate  the  elements,  and  yet 
they  had  priests,  and,  as  some  said,  three  orders  of  priests; 
they  allowed  the  former  also  to  receive  confessions,  yet 
they  rejected  the  confessional;  they  would  have  ecclesiastics 
supported  by  alms,  and  they  denounced  the  mendicant 
orders  as  Satan's  own  invention; — non  hxc  satis  inter  se 
'conveniimt.  Archbishop  Usher  has  been  at  the  pains  to 
collect  and  compare  the  manifold  accusations  cast  in  their 
teeth  and  makes  it  manifest  that  "  the  testimony  agreeth 
not  together.*  Here,  however,  were  many  of  the  prin- 
cipal tenets  of  the  reformed  faith,  long  before  the  time 
of  Luther: — in  the  fastnesses  of  these  mountains  (to  use  the 
language  of  bishop  Jewel)  were  they  found,  even  as  it  was 
in  such  places,  that  the  older  prophets  prophesied  from  the 
Spirit  of  God.  The  Vaudois  extended  themselves.  They 
sent  forth  a  colony  to  Calabria  which  was  basely  and  bar- 
barously put  to  the   sword,   when  the  signs  of  the  times 

*  De  Christianarum  Ecclesiar.  Successione  et  Statu,  c.  vi.  §  19.  33. 


TENETS   OF  THE  VAUDOIS.  b\) 

foreboded  a  reformation  in  Italy;  and  struck  the  pope  with 
"  fear  of  change."  A  settlement  so  distant  could  not  affect 
England,  or  if  so,  very  indirectly.  But  another  division  of 
the  same  people  migrated  to  Bohemia;  and  the  intercourse 
between  England  and  that  country  in  the  time  of  Wickliffe 
was  considerable.  Natives  of  Bohemia  were  then  students  at 
Oxford;*  and  Richard  II.  chose  a  Bohemian  princess  for  his 
queen.  The  partiality  which  she  herself  (as  indeed  her  nation 
in  general)  manifested  for  the  writings  of  our  early  reformer  is 
an  indication  of  some  sympathy  between  the  parties.  The 
good  seed  must  have  fallen  on  ground  prepared  to  receive  it, 
or  it  would  not  have  shot  up  so  vigorously;  and  it  is  proba- 
ble that  the  early  heresy  of  Bohemia  might  help  to  raise  up 
a  Wickliffe  for  England,  as  he  paid  the  debt  back  by  giving 
to  Bohemia  a  Huss  and  a  Jerome.  Certain  it  is,  that  cath- 
olic writers  of  the  greatest  authority,  in  treating  of  the  doc- 
trines of  Wickliffe,  have  considered  him  as  adopting  those 
of  the  Waldenses,  by  whatever  means  he  had  become  ac- 
quainted with  them;  and  the  Vaudois  to  this  day  claim  a 
fraternal  feeling  as  due  to  themselves  from  England,  on  the 
same  ground.!  Mr.  Wordsworth,  whose  '*  Ecclesiastical 
Sketches"  are  in  general  scarcely  more  remarkable  for  their 
poetry  than  for  their  historical  accuracy,  points  at  this  con- 
nection in  his  Sonnet  on  the  Waldenses: — 

These  who  gave  the  earliest  notice,  as  the  lark  • 

Springs  from  the  ground  the  morn  to  gratulatc: 

Who  rather  rose  the  day  to  antedate, 

By  striking  out  a  solitary  spark, 

When  all  the  world  with  midnight  gloom  was  dark. 

These  harbingers  of  good,  whom  bitter  hate 

In  vain  endeavoured  to  exterminate, 

Fell  obloquy  pursues  with  hideous  bark; 

But  they  desist  not;  and  the  sacred  fire, 

*  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  99.  t  See  Mr.  Gilly's  Narrative,  78. 

8* 


90  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Rekindled  thus,  from  dens  and  savage  woods 
Moves,  handed  on  with  never-ceasing  care. 
Through  courts,  through  camps,  o'er  limitary  floods; 
Nor  lacks  this  sea-girt  isle  a  timely  share 
Of  the  new  flame,  not  suffered  to  expire-" 


Some,  again,  of  the  same  persecuted  race  repaired  to  Pro- 
vence and  Languedoc,  where  they  were  known  by  the  name 
of  Albigenses,  or  heretics  of  Albi  (perhaps  the  parent  stock 
of  the  present  protestants  in  the  south  of  France);  and  on 
being  driven  thence,  as  they  were  driven  thither  by  the  in- 
quisition and  the  sword,  sought  shelter  in  the  neighbouring 
district  of  Guienne,  then  in  possession  of  the  English,  and 
thus  possibly  found  a  way  for  themselves  or  their  tenets,  or 
both,  into  Britain  by  another  channel.  But,  in  truth,  such 
opinions  as  those  entertained  by  the  Waldenses,  the  Albi- 
genses, the  Bohemians,  and  the  Lollards  (for  by  this  ktter 
name  the  disciples  of  Wickliffe  were  distinguished — a  name 
probably  given  to  them  as  being  tares,  lolium,  amongst  the 
wheat,)  had  quietly  diffused  themselves  over  a  great  part  of 
Christendom,  in  spite  of  the  unrighteous  pains  taken  by  the 
church  of  Rome  to  put  down  all  overt  expression  of  them. 
Springing  up  in  various  and  distant  spots  of  Europe,  they 
gradually  became  (so  to  speak)  confluent.  Nor  is  it  impos- 
sible to .  trace  the  means  by  which  this  might  be  effected. 
The  intercourse  of  mankind  was  considerable  in  those  days; 
greater,  perhaps,  than  we  are  apt  to  imagine,  in  this  age  of 
stage-coaches,  canals,  railroads,  and  steam-boats.  Pilgrima- 
ges promoted  travelling  to  an  extent  now  almost  incredible; 
— every  country  took  care  to  be  provided  with  some  bait  or 
other  for  the  holy  palmer,  and  the  more  distant  the  journey 
the  more  meritorious  the  service.  Vessels  were  regularly 
freighted  with  pilgrims.     Licenses  were  granted   by   King 


PROPAGATION  OE   HERESY.  91 

Henry  VI.  in  one  year  for  the  exportation  of  2433  pilgrims 
to  St.  James  of  Compostella.*     The  wife  of  Bath 

"  Thries  had  been  at  Jerusaleme, 
She  hadde  passed  many  a  strange  streme, 
At  Rome  she  hadde  ben,  and  at  Boloine, 
At  Galice,  at  Saint  James,  and  at  Coloine." 

Rome  indeed,  the  heart  as  it  were  of  Christendom,  was  per- 
petually receiving  and  expelling  a  current  of  Idle  or  devout 
dwellers  in  every  region  under  heaven,  and  was  thus  circu- 
lating, intelligence  of  all  kinds  through  all  lands.  The  home 
circuit  was  still  more  trodden;  100,000  pilgrims,  we  are 
told,  visited  St.  Thomas  a  Becket  in  a  single  year.t  Com- 
merce was  then  comparatively  little,  but  it  was  carried  on 
in  a  manner  to  secure  much  personal  communication.  Fairs, 
which  continued  a  fortnight  or  three  weeks,  and  whilst  they 
continued,  transformed  a  desolate  heath  perhaps,  into  a  tem- 
porary city,  with  streets  and  shops,  and  houses,  and  "  all 
appliances  to  boot,"  destined  to  disappear  once  more  when 
the  mart  was  over,  like  a  vision  of  fairyland,  drew  together 
from  all  quarters  merchants,  both  native  and  foreign.  Uni- 
versities were  not  places  of  resort  for  the  youth  of  the  mo- 
ther-country only,  but  were  filled  with  students  of  divers  na- 
tions; for,  Latin  being  the  conventional  language  of  them  all, 
no  man,  from  whatever  country,  was  excluded  by  the  want 
of  the  vernacular  tongue.:]:     The  same  circumstance  afford- 

*  Ellis's  Letters,  i.  110.  2d  Series. 
t  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  234. 

X  Latin  was  the  common  language  of  schools  also  before  and  at  the 
Reformation.  In  the  "  Monita  Ptedagogica  ad  suos  Discipulos  "  of  Li- 
ly,  the  grammarian,  and  first  master  of  Paul's,  is  the  following  admo- 
nition:— 

"  Et  quoties  loqueris,  memor  esto  loquare  Latine^ 
Et  veluti  scopulos  barbara  verba  fuge." 


92  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

ed  to  professors  a  facility  of  migrating  from  one  university 
to  another,  as  occasions  might  present  themselves,  without 
the  tax  of  learning  a  new  vocabulary.  Minstrels  were  ever 
upon  the  stroll  from  abbey  to  abbey, — the  welcome  carriers 
of  news  to  the  secluded  but  inquisitive  monks;  and  freema- 
sons, a  kind  of  nomade  race,  pitched  their  tents  wherever 
they  found  occupation,  and  having  reared  the  cathedral  or 
the  church  with  admirable  art,  journeyed  on  in  search  of 
other  employers.  Finally,  the  Italians  and  other  aliens, 
who  by  favour  of  the  pope  were  put  in  possession  of  church 
livings  in  every  country  to  which  his  authority  extended, 
furnished  another  channel  of  international  communication.- 
In  the  reign  of  Henry  III,  the  annual  value  of  the  benefices 
so  disposed  of  in  England  was  70,000  marks,  a  sum  more 
than  triple  the  whole  revenue  of  the  crown.*  These  were 
some  of  the  many  ways  in  which  the  intercourse  of  mankind 
was  maintained  in  those  primitive  times,  and  the  circulation 
of  any  popular  doctrine  effectually  secured,  whatever  obsta- 
cles might  be  opposed  to  it.  Thus  it  was  that  the  principles 
of  the  Reformation  were  slowly  and  silently  making  their 
way  through  Europe,  when  perhaps  their  progress  was  little 
suspected;  and  one  of  those  under  currents  was  setting. in 
which  are  not  in  the  end  less  powerful  because  they  happen 
for  a  season  to  be  unobserved.  It  is  singular,  that  when  Dante 
conducts  his  hero  to  that  quarter  of  the  infernal  regions 
where  the  heretics  are  paying  the  penalty  of  their  sin,  being 
condemned  to  stand  upon  their  heads  in  jars  of  fire,  he  adds 
a  remark  indicative  of  the  temper  of  the  times,  and  much  to 
our  present  purpose,  that  these  fiery  sepulchres  were  filled 
with  victims  to  a  number  far  beyond  all  expectation.! 
Wickliffe,  we  know,  found  himself  very  quickly  at  the  head 
of  a  numerousand  powerful  body  in  England,  simply  be- 

*  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  30.  note,  +  Inferno,  c.  ix, 


WICKLIFFE.  93 

cause  he  furnished  a  mouth-pieee  to  those  who  had  not  as 
yet  mustered  courage  to  speak  out  for  themselves,  so  mista- 
ken is  the  conclusion  of  the  Roman  catholic,  that  the  unity 
of  his  church  is  to  be  inferred  from  its  silence.  A  third  part 
of  the  clergy,  WicklifTe  himself  tells  us,  thought  with  him 
on  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  supper,  and  "  would  defend 
that  doctrine  on  payne  of  theyr  lyfe;"  and  Knighton,  a  con- 
temporary writer,  affirms,  that  you  could  not  meet  two  peo- 
ple in  the  way  but  one  of  them  was  a  disciple  of  WicklifTe.* 
Moreover,  when  he  was  cited  before  the  bishops  at  Lam- 
beth, it  was  not  merely  the  influence  of  the  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster that  protected  him,  as  a  useful  partisan,  but  the  mul- 
titude clamoured  for  his  release,  as  a  teacher  of  the  truth; 
or  "  his  person  was  saved  out  of  the  hands  of  his  enemies," 
(so  says  Fuller  in  his  own  inimitable  manner)  "  as  was  once 
the  doctrine  of  his  godly  namesake;  they  feared  the  people; 
*  for  all  men  counted  /o/mthat  he  was  a  prophet  indeed.'  "t 
The  moment  was  peculiarly  propitious  to  the  extension  of 
WicklifFe's  opinions.  The  schism  in  the  papacy  occurred 
a  few  years  before  his  death;  and  the  spectacle  of  two  infal- 
lible heads  of  the  church  anathematising  one  another,  could 
not  fail  to  open  the  eyes  of  Christendom  to  the  unwarranted 
pretensions  of  both.  To  this  circumstance,  probably,  Wick- 
lifTe was  indebted  for  permission  to  end  his  turbulent  life  in 
peace,  in  his  own  parish,  and  in  his  own  bed,  since  the  dis-. 
position  of  Rome  towards  this  arch-heretic  was  sufficiently 
testified,  when,  forty-one  years  afterwards,  the  council  of 
Constance,  in  impotent  rage,  condemned  his  bones  to  be  ex- 
humed, burned,  and  cast  into  the  brook.  But  the  Swift 
(such  is  its  name)  bore  them  to  the  Avon,  that  to  the  Severn, 
the  Severn  to  the  sea,  to  be  dispersed  unto  all  lands;  which 
things  are  an  allegory. 

*  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  97,  98.  t  Mark,  xi.  32. 


94  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Of  this  great  reformer  himself,  wlio  so  raised  the  waters 
not  of  this  country  only,  but  of  Europe  at  large,  that  Luther 
came  in  with  the  next  wave,  it  is  difficult  to  speak.  A  most 
effectual  weapon  he  undoubtedly  was  for  the  pulling  down 
of  strongholds;  but  we  may  admire  the  wisdom  of  God  in 
adjusting  his  instruments  to  the  work  which  he  has  for  them 
to  do,  when  he  raised  up  first  a  WickHffe,  and  afterwards 
a  Cranmer.  Had  they  changed  places,  Cranmer's  meek 
and  gentle  spirit  would  have  been  overborne  by  the  almost 
irresistible  torrent  of  corruption  of  the  times  of  Edward; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  Wickliffe's  daring  and  impetuous 
temper,  and  his  hasty  views  of  ecclesiastical  polity,  would 
have  urged  him  to  go  all  lengths  with  Henry — and  whilst 
he  would  have  demolished  a  church  of  Rome,  he  would  have 
left  few  or  no  materials  for  erecting  a  church  of  England. 
Cranmer  and  his  colleagues  have  been  pronounced  by  our 
great  puritan  poet,  "  time  serving  and  halting  prelates;" 
happily,  in  one  sense,  they  were  so.  Wickliffe  would  have 
been  a  man  more  after  Milton's  heart;  but  "  the  wisdom 
which  is  from  above,"  we  read,  "  is  gentle:"  and  if  there 
be  one  thing  more  than  another  that  fixes  the  attention  of 
sober-minded  and  considerate  men  when  contemplating  the 
progress  of  the  Reformation,  it  is  the  calmness,  the  temper, 
the  prudence,  the  presence  of  mind,  with  which  Cranmer 
endeavoured  to  direct  (like  a  good  and  guardian  angel)  the 
tempest  on  which  he  rode;  and  whilst  he  felt  how  much  the 
fierce  element  was  imperatively  commissioned  to  destroy, 
he  never  for  a  moment  forgot  the  still  nobler  part,  how 
much  it  was  permitted  to  spare:  he  steered  the  ark  of  his 
church  with  wonderful  dexterity  through  a  sea  of  troubles, 
avoiding  the  scattered  Cyclades,  when  it  is  probable  that, 
had  his  great  predecessor  been  the  pilot,  he  would  have  run 
it  aground,  and  left  it  a  wreck.  Wickliffe,  as  a  sincere 
believer,  was  naturally  vexed  at  the  scandals  by  which  he 


OPINIONS  OF  V/ICKLIFFE.  95 

saw  Christ's  religion  brought  into  contempt;  as  a  secular 
churchman  and  a  champion  of  the  seculars,  he  hated  tlie 
friars  with  a  cordial  hatred,  and  took  pleasure  in  exposing 
their  covetousness  and  frauds;  as  an  academician,  he  could 
not  tolerate  their  encroachments  on  the  rights  and  privileges 
of  the  universities,  and  their  surreptitious  abduction  of  four 
fifths  of  the  students;*  as  a  man  of  learning,  the  first  of  his 
day,  he  would  give  no  quarter  to  monastic  ignorance;  as  a 
subject  of  the  King  of  England,  he  would  not  allow  of  a 
divided  allegiance   in  a  church  of  England:  but  whilst  he 
stood  up  the  advocate  of  these  principles,  the  impetuosity 
of  his  temper  drove  him  on  to  extravagant  lengths,  and  now 
exhibits  him  not  so  much  in  the  light  of  a  religious  reformer 
as  of  a  religious  revolutionist.     Perhaps  he  blinded  him- 
self to  the  necessary  consequences   of  many  of  his  own 
opinions,  and,  like  Wesley,  was  carried  further,  both  in 
himself  and  in  his  followers,  than  he  at  first  meant  to  go: 
but  assuredly  in  him,  and  still  more  in  his  school,  may  be 
traced  the  elements  of  a  character  destined  afterwards  to  at- 
tain to  an  unequivocal  eminence  in  our  history,  that  of  the 
puritan,  and  the  various  sects  which,  though  not  fully  fledged 
till  the  civil  wars,  were  tumbled  forth  like  bats  out  of  their 
hiding  places  at  the  first  shock  of  the  Reformation,  owed 
their  origin  perhaps  to  this  vigorous,  sincere,  but  incautious 
antagonist  of  the  church  of  Rome.     When  we  see  him  op- 
posing the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  that  fruitful  mother 
of  mischief,  howbeit  wavering  as  it  should  seem,  in  his  own 
mind  between  what  was  afterwards  the  "  real  presence"  of 
Luther  and  the   "  spiritual  presence"  of  Zuingle;  denying 
the  superiority  of  the  church  of  Rome  over  other  churches, 
and  the  power  of  the  keys  as  pertaining  to  the  pope  rather 
than  to  any  other  priest,  when  we  see  him  maintaining  that 

*  See  Milner's  History  of  the  Church,  iv.  109. 


96  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  Gospel  is  alone,  aud  of  itself,  a  sufficient  rule  of  faith 
and  practice,  and  that  all  have  a  right  to  read  it  for  them- 
selves; that  pilgrimages  and  indulgences  are  vain  and  un- 
profitable, the  worship  of  saints  unauthorised,  and  forced 
vows  of  celibacy  unlawful;  above  all,  when  we  find  him 
proclaiming  (though  here  he  does  not  speak  with  the  em- 
phasis of  Luther,  who  made  this  article  the  test  of  a  stand- 
ing or  falling  church,)  that  justification  comes  by  faith  in 
Christ  alone;*  we  praise  the  man,  for  we  find  him  labouring 
strictly  in  his  vocation,  purifying  the  Word  of  God  from 
traditions  and  additions  which  had  made  it  of  none  effect, 
and  disabusing  the  people  of  dangerous  and  deadly  errors. 
Nay,  more,  he  might  have  gone  further  if  he  pleased;  and 
however  inexpedient  it  might  be  to  enlarge  upon  the  doc- 
trine of  Divine  decrees — and  of  its  inexpediency,  we  have 
an  opinion — still  there  would  have  been  no  indication  in 
this  of  his  weapons  being  carnal,  of  his  treasure  (and  great 
that  treasure  was)  being  contained  in  an  earthen  vessel;  but 
rather  an  argument  that  he  felt  strongly  the  error  of  the 
church  of  Rome  in  attributing  so  much  to  man's  own 
powers,  and  that,  impelled  by  such  a  feeling,  he  rushed  into 
the  opposite  extreme,  and  refused  to  him  such  powers  as 
were  his  due.  But  when  he  argues  that  the  wickedness 
of  the  priest  vitiates  the  acts  of  his  ministry,!  in  contradic- 
tion, to  the  inference  which  may  be  fairly  drawn  from  the 
text,  where  the  people  are  declared  to  have  "  transgressed" 
because  they  despised  the  offering  of  the  Lord,  though  the 
wickedness  of  Eli's  sons^was  the  excuse,^  and  in  contradic- 
tion to  the  express  command  of  our  Lord,  that  whatsoever 

*  See  Milner's  History  of  the  Church,  iv.  130—136. 
t  See  Wickliffe's  Life  as  given  in  Fox,  extracted  in  Wordsworth's 
Ecc.  Biog.  i.  52.  121. 
X  1  Sam.  ii.  17.  24. 


ERRORS  OF  WICKLIFFE.  97 

the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  who  sat  in  Moses'  seat  bid  men 
observe,  they  were  to  observe  and  do<  though  they  were 
not  to  do  after  their  works,*  when  he  maintains  tithes  to 
be  mere  alms,  and  affirms  that  parishioners  have  a  right 
to  withhold  them  in  case  the  minister  provokes  them  so  to 
do,  of  which  they  are  to  be  themselves  the  judges;t  and 
when  he  teaches,  in  the  same  spirit,  that  church  endow- 
ments in  perpetuity  may  be  resumed  under  similar  circum- 
stances by  the  patron  or  the  king,:):  thereby  subverting 
the  very  principles  upon  which  not  only  ecclesiastical  pro- 
perty rests,  but  all  property  whatever,  and  annihilating  an 
establishment  at  a  blow;  when  his  immediate  disciples,  such 
as  William  Thorpe  and  Lord  Cobham,  are  found  erecting 
themselves  into  inquisitors  of  the  morals  of  the  su})erior 
clergy,  and  denying  them  to  be  priests  of  God,  whether 
archbishops  or  bishops,  if  their  character,  conversation,  and 
conduct  did  not  answer  to  a  test  of  their  own;§  these  dog- 
mas when  we  read,  it  is  difficult  to  separate  the  conscien- 
tious reformer  from  the  exasperated  antagonist,  or  to  refrain 
exclaiming  with  St.  Paul,  "  Are  ye  not  carnal,  and  w;\lk  as 
men?"  It  may  not  be  fair  to  impute  to  Wickliffe  himself 
all  the  extravagances  of  his  followers,  yet  they  are  very 
natural  consequences  of  the  principles  he  adopted  and 
taught;  in  many  cases  they  must  have  seen  the  light  in 
Wickliffe 's  own  time;  some  of  them  undoubtedly  attach  to 
himself;  and  they  are  all,  at  any  rate,  remarkable  as  the 
first  fruits  of  those  opinions  and  practices  which,  when 
coupled  with  politics,  some  two  centuries  and  a  half  later, 
overturned  both  altar  and  throne.  We  find  the  Lollard 
taking  upon  himself  to  pronounce  on  the  call  of  his  eccle- 
siastical ruler,  and  yielding  or  refusing  him  canonical  obe- 

»  Matt,  xxiii,  2,  3.  t  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  53. 

t  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  22.  §  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  125.  138. 

9 


98  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

dience  after  a  verdict  of  his  own:*  we  find  him  traversing 
the  country  from  town  to  town,  preaching  in  churches  and 
churchyards,  in  fairs  and  markets,  by  a  self-constituted  au- 
thority, without  Ucense  had  from  the  bishop,  or  regard  paid 
to  his  inhibition  or  summons:!  we  find  himstumbUng  at  pon- 
tifical habits,  and  for  himself  going  about  in  his  blue  or  russet 
gown,  andbarefoot;Jwe  find  him  strongly  "prejudiced  against 
the  use  of  church  music  and  organs  (which  was  evidently  the 
feeling  of  Wickliffe  himself)  ,§  and  quoting  Scripture  in 
support  of  his  prejudice  in  the  very  spirit  of  the  days  of 
Cromwell,  as  though  Christ  would  not  raise  the  damsel  to 
life  until  he  had  first  put  forth  the  minstrels:\\  we  find  him 
holding  up  to  the  clergy  the  duly  of  copying  St.  Paul  to  the 
letter,  and  of  labouring  like  him  with  their  own  hands  for 
their  own  maintenance;^  and  we  find  him  (a  circumstance 
which  is  here  mentioned  not  as  a  matter  of  charge,  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  illustrating  his  resemblance  to  the  puritan) 
dealing  in  a  phraseology  of  his  own,  expressive  of  the  sect 
to  which  he  belonged,  and  less  loose  and  secular  than  was 
usual.**  It  was  natural  that  a  party  now  becoming  nume- 
rous, having  religion  for  their  common  bond  (the  strongest 

*  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  120,  121.  125.  t  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  162. 

t  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  182. 

§  See  the  opinions  of  this  reformer,  collected  from  his  works,  in  the 
Rev.  H.  Baber's  life  of  him,  p.  32, 

II  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  170.  IT  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  176. 

**  In  one  particular,  this  peculiarity  of  the  Lollard  must  have  ad- 
ministered a  very  wholesome  rebuke  to  a  sin  of  the  times.  He  would 
not  swear  by  any  of  the  members  of  Christ's  body,  which  was  the 
heedless  fashion  of  the  day,  but  would  content  himself  with  such  an 
aflirmation,  as  "  I  am  syker  it  is  soth."  (See  the  Rev.  H.  Baber's  Me- 
moirs of  Wickliffe,  prefixed  to  his  Translation  of  the  New  Testament, 
p.  35.)  May  not  the  phrase  a  '•  yea-forsooth  knave,"  used  by  FalstafF 
(2  Hen.  IV,  ii.  sc.  2,)  have  been  a  popular  term  of  obloquy,  originally 
applied  to  the  Lollards  by  the  dissolute  and  profane?  See  also  Chau- 
cer,  "  The  Shipmanne's  Prologue." 


THE  LOLLARD  AND  PURITAN.  99 

of  all),  and  holding  some  tenets  not  altogether  favourable  to  a 
monarchical  government  and  an  episcopal  church,  should  be 
regarded  with  some  suspicion.  The  sheriff's  oath,  as  it  was 
framed  by  statutes  of  Richard  II.  and  Henry  IV.,  required  of 
that  officer  to  watch  the  Lollards;  and  the  clause  to  this  effect 
continued  in  force  till  the  time  of  Charles  I.,  when  Sir  Ed- 
ward Coke,  on  being  made  sheriff  ot. the  county  of  Bucking- 
ham, objected  to  it,  and  it  was  in  consequenee  withdrawn.* 
Mr.  Hume,  who  is  less  sceptical  in  weighing  the  value  of 
evidence  when  it  tends  to  cast  imputations  on  religious  pro- 
fessors than  on  some  other  occasions,  boldly  pronounces  lord 
Cobham  to  have  been  guilty  of  high  treason,  (in  spite  of 
Fox's  express  testimony  to  the  contrary,)  and  the  sect  in 
general  to  have  had  treasonable  designs;!  but  St.  Paul  him- 
self was  called  a  "  mover  of  sedition,"  though  he  actually 
preached  that  to  "  resist  the  power"  was  to  "  resist  the  or- 
dinance of  God."  The  executions  of  the  Lollards,  which 
took  place  between  Wickliffe  's  death  and  the  Reformation, 
appear  to  have  been  in  reality  on  the  charge  of  heresy,  not 
of  disaffection;  though  it  is  true  that  the  latter  accusation 
was  put  forward  in  one  or  two  instances,  as  being  the  more 
popular  charge,  just  as  our  Lord  was  accused  of  making  him- 
self a  king,  when  a  Roman  tribunal  could  otherwise  have  seen 
no  fault  in  him.  Besides,  the  manner  in  which  sentence  was 
carried  into  effect — which  was  in  all  cases,  we  believe,  by 
fire,  the  appropriate  punishment  of  heresy — confirms  this 
opinion.  Still  some  of  the  principles  of  the  Lollard  were, 
doubtless,  of  a  dangerous  political  character;  in  his  hands 
they  appear  to  have  lain  dormant;  but  when  he  lapsed  into 
the  puritan,  the  politician  was  combined  in  him,  and  then 
they  became  active  and  mischievous.  If  he  ran  into  extremes, 
he  had  some  cause  and  excuse  for  so  doing;  he,  at  least  was 

*  NeaPs  Hist,  of  Puritans,  i.  6.  t  Fox,  i.  740. 


100  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

not  straining  at  gnats,  but  at  camels.  An  unmitigated  creed 
drove  him  into  an  unmeasured  abomination  of  it;  the  perso- 
nal corruption  of  the  Roman  catholic  priesj  of  those  times, 
tempted  him  to  question  his  official  authority;  his  abuse  of 
what  was  lawfully  his  own,  to  dispute  his  abstract  right  of 
it:  but  though  in  all  this  he  might  be  mistaken,  he  was  not 
mercenary;  and  whatever  his  opinions  were,  however  unte- 
nable, he  was  true  to  them  in  life  and  in  death,  forfeiting  for 
the  sake  of  them  his  property,  his  liberty,  and  his  peace,  and 
often  in  the  end  sealing  them  with  his  blood.  But,  after  all, 
the  great  glory  of  the  Lollard  was  this,  that  he  gave  to  the 
people  tlie  pure  word  of  God.  The  work  whereby  Wick- 
liffe  hastened  the  Reformation,  was  his  translation  of  the 
Scriptures  into  his  own  mother  tongue.  Apart  from  this, 
his  labours,  as  valuable  as  they  were,  might  not  be  thought 
of  unmixed  value.  Herein  he  had  the  sure  promise  of  God 
pledged  to  his  success.  "  For  as  the  rain  cometh  down  and 
the  snow  from  heaven,  and  returneth  not  thither,  but  water- 
eth  the  earth,  and  maketh  it  bring  forth  and  bud,  that  it  may 
give  seed  to  the  sower  and  bread  to  the  eater;  so  shall  my 
word  be,  saith  the  Lord,  that  goeth  forth  out  of  my  mouth: 
it  shall  not  return  unto  me  void,  but  it  shall  accomplish  that 
which  I  please,  and  it  shall  prosper  in  the  thing  whereto  I 
sent  it."*  Void  it  did  not  return.  Hitherto  the  Scriptures 
were  little  known.  Cadmon,  it  is  true,  had  paraphrased  in 
verse  detached  portions  of  them  in  the  seventh  century. 
Bede,  it  has  been  before  observed,  had  translated  the  Gos- 
pel of  St.  John.  Translations  of  all  the  Gospels  into  An- 
glo-Saxon had  been  made  between  the  reigns  of  Alfred  and 
Harold.  Elfric  produced  versions  of  many  books  of  the 
Old  'J'estament,  as  well  as  of  the  New;  but,  meanwhile  the 
invasion  of  the  Danes  threw  the  kingdom  into  a  frightful 

*  Isaiah,  Iv.l  0,11. 


DESIRE  FOR  THE  SCRIPTURES.  101 

State  of  anarchy,  and  long  kept  it  so  disturbed.  Then  the 
Norman  conquest  succeeding  again  broke  its  spirit  and 
changed  its  language;  so  that  the  word  of  God  had  become 
precious  in  the  days  of  WicklifTe.  The  Anglo-Saxon  which 
still  continued  to  be  the  staple  of  the  dialect  of  England,  was 
by  this  time  saturated  with  Norman  words  (no  great  num- 
ber having  been  adopted  into  it  since;  and  whilst  Chaucer  was 
labouring  iojix  the  English  tongue  (its  winged  words)  on 
principles  of  taste,  amongst  the  courtiers  and  nobles,  Wick- 
lifTe, perhaps  even  a  more  perfect  master  of  it  still,  was  es- 
tablishing it  yet  more  permanently,  by  knitting  up  in  it  the 
immortal  hopes  of  the  people  at  large,  and  stamping  it  in  a 
complete  translation  of  the  Bible,  with  "  holiness  to  the 
Lord."  At  this  day  his  version  can  scarcely  be  called  ob- 
solete. I  speak  of  the  New  Testament,  for  the  Old  has  ne- 
ver yet  been  printed;  a  reproach  both  upon  the  divines  and 
the  philologists  of  England,  which,  we  trust,  will  speedily 
be  removed.  At  this  day,  it  might  be  read  in  our  churches 
without  the  necessity  of  many  even  verbal  alterations;  and 
on  comparing  it  with  the  authorised  version  of  King  James, 
it  will  be  found  that  the  latter  was  hammered  on  Wickliffe's 
anvil.  By  this  great  and  good  work  the  pleasure  of  the 
Most  High  prospered  in  his  hand.  An  eager  appetite  for 
Scriptural  knowledge  was  excited  among  the  people,  which 
they  would  make  any  sacrifice  and  risk  any  danger  to  grati- 
fy. Entire  copies  of  the  Bible,  when  they  could  only  be 
multiplied  by  means  of  amanuenses,  were  too  costly  tb  be 
within  the  reach  of  very  many  readers;  but  those  who  could 
not  procure  the  "  volume  of  the  Book,"  would  give  a  load 
of  hay  for  a  few  favourite  chapters,  and  many  such  scraps 
were  consumed  upon  the  persons  of  the  martyrs  at  the  stake.* 
They  would  hide  the  forbidden  treasure  under  the  floors  of 

*  Ecc.  Biog.  i.  290;  where  Fox  and  others  attest  these  things. 
9* 


102  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

their  houses,  and  put  their  lives  in  peril,  rather  than  forego 
the  book  they  desired;  they  would  sit  up  all  night,  their 
doors  being  shut  for  fear  of  surprise,  reading  or  hearing 
others  read  the  word  of  God;  they  would  bury  themselves 
in  the  woods,  and  there  converse  with  it  in  solitude;  they 
would  tend  their  herds  in  the  fields,  and  still  steal  an  hour 
for  drinking  in  the  good  tidings  of  great  joy: — thus  was  the 
angel  come  down  to  trouble  the  water,  and  there  was  only 
wanted  some  providential  crisis  to  put  the  nation  into  it,  that 
it  might  be  made  whole. 


103 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LUTHER. ERASMUS. SIR  T.    MORE. NEW   TRANSLATION    OF 

THE  BIBLE. DEMAND  FOR   IT. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  England  in  the  fifteenth  century: 
the  minds  of  men  generally  alienated  from  the  church  of 
Rome  hy  reason  of  its  corruption;  their  religious  knowledge 
improved,  and  improving  daily,  by  the  wider  diffusion  of 
the  Scriptures  in  the  mother-tongue,  to  which  the  art  of  print- 
ing now  so  effectually  contributed;  and  a  sect,  neither  few 
in  numbers,  nor  wanting  in  activity  or  courage,  in  the  heart 
of  the  kingdom,  ready  to  profit  by  any  occasion  which 
might  offer  of  opening  the  eyes  of  their  countrymen. 
Providence,  having  now  sufficiently  prepared  the  world  for 
the  reception  of  such  a  character,  raised  up  a  great  reformer, 
whose  labours,  though  immediately  confined  to  Germany, 
still  made  themselves  felt  throughout  Europe,  and  more^ 
especially  in  this  island. 

Martin  Luther,  the  son  of  a  working  miner  in  Saxony, 
was  born  at  Isleben  on  the  10th  of  November,  1483,  a  day 
much  to  be  remembered.  He  was  a  man  for  the  times;  qua- 
lified by  the  force  of  his  character  forgiving  them  a  wrench. 
In  his  early  years  he  took  on  himself  the  vows  of  an  Augus- 
tin  monk,  and,  to  use  his  own  words,  was  a  "  most  mad 
Papist."  Various  circumstances  concurred  to  disabuse  him  of 
his  bigotry;  they  have  been  severally  advanced  with  more  or 
less  emphasis  according  to  the  respective  views  of  the 
writers  who  have  treated  this  subject — the  secular  historian 
tracing  his  conversion  to  secondary  causes,  the  devout,  as- 
cribing it  wholly  to  the  grace  of  God.  Both  may  be  right; 
it  was  probably  the  effect  of  accident,  of  reflection,  and  of 


104  REFORMATION  IN    ENGLAND. 

time,  God  working  by  means  of  such  inslruments.  At  the 
age  of  three  and  twenty  tlie  business  of  his  monastery  car- 
ried him  to  Rome.  He  saw  there  more  than  was  expedient. 
He  was  surprised  to  find,  on  near  inspection,  that  the  image 
which  he  had  been  taught  to  believe  fallen  from  Jupiter,  wore 
many  appearances  of  having  been  made  by  the  craftsman. 
He  was  too  sincere  himself  not  to  feel  disgust  at  the  symp- 
toms of  hollow  faith  which  forced  themselves  upon  his  no- 
tice in  the  capital  of  Christendom  and  he  returned  to  Saxony 
from  his  mission  "  with  thoughts  arising  in  his  heart." 
He  betook  himself  to  the  study  of  the  Scriptures,  with 
Erasmus  for  his  help;  with  whose  system  of  interpre- 
^l^ion,  however,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been  entirely 
satis'^d.  He  felt  an  increasing  dislike  of  the  schoolmen 
and  soon  entertained  a  suspicion,  which,  by  degrees,  ripened 
into  a  conviction,  of  the  truth  of  that  doctrine  which  proved 
afterwards  the  burden  of  his  preaching — justification  by 
faith  in  Christ  only.*  Tetzel  a  Dominican  monk,  was  com- 
missioned by  the  pope  (Leo  X.,)  who  wished  to  recruit  his 

*  Nevertheless  Luther  is  careful  to  maintain  good  works  as  the 
fruits  of  faith,  though  not  as  the  meritorious  cause  of  salvation. 
"  Having  so  taught  of  faith  in  Christ,"  says  he  "  we  now  teach  touch- 
ing good  works  also.  Seeing  that  by  faith  thou  hast  apprehended 
Christ,  by  whom  thou  art  justified,  go  now,  love  God  and  thy  neigh- 
bours; pray  to  God,  give  him  thanks;  preach  him,  praise  him,  confess 
him;  be  good  to  thy  neighbour,  help  him,  do  thy  duty  by  him.  These 
are  truly  good  works,  flowing  as  they  do  from  that  faith  and  joy  con- 
ceived in  the  heart  by  reason  of  our  forgiveness  of  sins  through  Christ." 
— Comment,  on  the  Galatians,  ii.  16.  i\.nd  again,  "  After  that  Christ 
has  been  apprehended  by  faith,  and  that  lam  become  dead  to  the  law, 
justified  from  sin,  freed  from  death,  the  devil,  and  hell,  through  Christ, 
I  do  good  works,  I  love  God,  I  give  him  thanks,  I  exercise  charity  to- 
wards my  neighbour.  But  this  charity,  and  the  works  consequent 
upon  it,  neither  inform  my  faith,  nor  adorn  it;  but  my  faith  informs  and 
adorns  my  charity.  This  is  my  theology;  these  my  paradoxes." — ii.  18. 


PROGRESS  OF  LUTHER.  105 

treasury,  whether  for  the  supply  of  his  extravagance,  or 
the  erection  of  his  church,  or  the  prosecution  of  his  war 
against  the  Turks,  to  put  up  his  inckilgences  for  sale  in 
Germany.  Tetzel  executed  his  trust  with  the  most  shame- 
less contempt  of  all  decency^.  There  vvas  no  sin,  however 
monstrous  (and  some  he  named,)  which  he  had  not  both  the 
will  and  the  power  to  remit.  It  was  in  vain  for  the  German 
pastors  to  insist  on  penance;  here  was  a  papal  missionary  at 
hand  ready  to  absolve  from  all  pains  and  penalties.  The 
indulgences  were  farmed;  they  were  sold  in  the  gross  to  the 
best  bidders,  and  were  by  them  dispersed  amongst  the  retail 
pedlars  of  pardons,  who  resorted  to  the  public  houses,  ex- 
hibited their  wares,  and  picked  the  pockets  of  the  credulous. 
Extravagance  like  this  called  up  Luther,  excited  his  honest 
indignation,  and  drove  him  to  write.  He  had  no  notion 
where  this  first  step  was  to  lead  him.  In  the  simplicity  of 
his  heaft-t  he  thought  that  the  pope  would  be  on  his  side,  and 
condemn  such  flagrant  excesses  in  his  emissaries.  Leo  was 
as  little  aware  as  himself  of  the  critical  position  of  his  affairs. 
*'  Brother  Martin,"  quoth  he,  "  is  a  man  of  very  fine  ge- 
nius;" and  he  regarded  the  whole  matter  as  a  battle  of  kites 
and  crows.  But  Martin  was  in  earnest,  whatever  Leo  might 
be.  Still  he  had  little  idea  how  much  he  would  have  to 
unlearn.  He  did  not  question,  for  instance,  the  pope's  su- 
premacy, till  Eckius,  one  of  his  indiscreet  antagonists,  pro- 
voked him  to  scrutinise  the  pretension,  and  then,  like  honest 
Latimer,  he  found  himself  hard  to  be  persuaded  that  our 
Saviour  said — "  Peter,  1  do  mean  this  by  sitting  in  thy  boat, 
that  thou  shalt  go  to  Rome,  and  be  bishop  there  five  and 
twenty  years  after  mine  ascension,  and  all  thy  successors 
shall  be  rulers  of  the  universal  church  after  thee."*  On  he 
went,  feeling  his  way  and  light  continued  to  break  upon 

*  Latimer,  Serm.  i.  188. 


106  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

him.  Two  years  later  than  the  time  when  he  wrote  against 
indulgences  (which  was  in  1517)  he  tells  Spalatinus,  the 
secretary  of  the  Elector  of  Saxony,  and  his, own  confiden- 
tial correspondent  that  he  had  no  intention  to  separate  from 
the  apostolic  see.*  He  examines  the  decretals;  and  then 
he  whispers  in  his  friend's  ear  that  he  begins  to  suspect 
the  pope  to  be  antichrist.  He  ponders  somewhat  longer, 
and  he  now  acquaints  him  that  he  has  not  much  doubt  of 
the  fact;t  and  shortly  after  this  (in  1520)  he  publishes  his 
"  Tract  against  the  Popedom,"  in  which  he  draws  the 
sword;  and  then  his  "  Babylonish  Captivity,"  in  which 
he  throws  away  the  scabbard.  Measures  are  no  longer 
kept  by  either  party.  On  the  15th  June,  1520,  Leo  issued 
his  damnatory  bull  excommunicating  Luther,  delivering  him 
over  to  Satan,  requiring  the  secular  princes  to  apprehend 
him,  and  condemning  his  books  to  be  burned.;}:  Luther, 
nothing  dismayed,  on  the  lOtli  December  of  the  same  year 
returns  measure  for  measure,  and  raising  a  hugh  pile  of 
of  wood  without  the  walls  of  Wittenberg,  commits  decretals, 
canon  law,  and  bull  to  the  flames  together.§  Time  was 
when  this  would  have  been  frenzy;  it  was  still  perilous;  but 
public  opinion,  which  the  art  of  printing  had  called  into 
being,  and  which  was  now  gathering  strength,  was  with  the 
reformer.  The  anathema  was  torn  in  pieces  at  Erfurt,  and 
was  ill  received  every  where. I|  Politics  again  stood  Luther's 
friend.  Frederick,  the  elector  of  Saxony,  his  cautious  but  con- 
stant protector,  had  laid  the  new  emperor  (Charles  V.)  under 
personal  obligations,  by  declining  the  imperial  crown  for  him- 
self and  transferring  his  interest  to  him; — here  was  a  lion's 
mouth    stopped.       Then  Charles  and   Francis   were  rival 

*  Milner's  Church  History,  iv.  404.  t  Id.  iv.  406.  443. 

X  Id.  iv.  474.  §  Id.  iv.  497. 

II  Id.  iv.  475. 


LUTHER  S  WEAPONS.  107 

monarchs,  and  in  the  midst  of  their  rivalry,  the  Lutheran 
heresy  (like  the  earthquake  at  Thrasymenae,  which  rolled 
away  unperceived  by  the  combatants)  did  not  rivet  their 
exclusive  attention  amidst  the  intrigues  of  the  cabinet,  or 
the  clashing  of  arms;  and  moreover  the  Lutheran  party 
might  be  useful  to  either  to  turn  a  balance.  Accordingly, 
Luther  ventured  to  encounter  the  diet  of  Worms,  and  felt, 
what  he  exclaimed  to  the  vast  multitude  who  hailed  him 
as  he  stepped  out  of  his  carriage,  that  "  God  was  on  his 
side."  He  came  out  of  that  trial  unharmed,  however  the 
smell  offire  might  have  passed  on  him,  and  invested  even  with 
greater  influence  on  public  opinion  than  before.  He  found 
it  necessary  to  submit  to  a  friendly  imprisonment  in  the 
castle  of  Wartburg,  till  the  tyranny  of  the  diet  should  be 
overpast;  but  he  availed  himself  of  this  unacceptable  leisure 
for  the  manufacture  of  his  arms.  On  the  one  hand,  he 
he  taught  the  people  out  of  the  Scriptures,  giving  them  an 
admirable  translation,  first  of  the  New,  and  then  of  the  Old 
Testament,  a  translation  which  our  own  Cranmer  kept  ever 
by  his  side;*  he  laboured  with  still  greater  care  his  Com- 
mentary on  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  a  work  containing 
wholesome  doctrine  and  most  necessary  for  those  times,  when 
(as  in  the  days  of  St.  Paul)  faith  in  Christ  was  overlaid  by 
ritual  observances,  and  merit  was  pleaded  where  mercy 
should  have  been  craved.  On  the  other  hand,  he  did  not 
scruple  to  wield  more  ignoble  implements  of  war;  if  the 
sword  was  not  at  hand,  he  could  smite  with  the  ox-goad. 
Coarse  and  grotesque  caricatures  of  his  opponents  in  a  fron- 
tispiece, often  recommended  his  works  to  his  plebeian  readers; 
a  cardinal  decorated  with  a  fox's  brush  which  he  trailed 
through  the  mire,  and  with  which  he  bespattered  his  neigh- 
bours; a  pope  seated  astride  upon  a  sow,  or  furnished  with 

*  Strype,  Cranmer,  p.  287.  fol. 


108  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND.     . 

a  pair  of  ass's  ears,  whilst  a  legion  of  imps,  busy  like  the 
Rosicrucian  gnomes,  on  mischief,  would  be  crowning  him 
with  a  nauseous  mitre,  or  lowering  him  into  an  infernal  abyss 
or  preparing  faggols  for  his  burning.*  To  these  and  the 
like  weapons  of  warfare  did  this  intrepid  and  unceremonious 
assailant  descend,  partly  excused  by  the  grosser  taste  of  the 
times  in  which  he  lived,  and  partly  by  that  disregard  for 
petty  proprieties,  which  is  felt  in  a  degree  by  most  men  of 
masculine  minds,  and  which  is  felt  by  all  men  in  mo- 
ments of  excitement  and  when  the  cause  which  they  have 
at  heart  is  at  stake.  Melancthon  it  is  true,  poured  oil  upon 
the  waves,  or,  as  Erasmus  was  pleased  to  express  it  walked 
after  Luther,  as  Lite  after  Ate;t  still  the  whole  surface 
of  society  was  troubled,  and  many  who  had  once  thought 
that  a  storm  might  clear  the  air,  now  heard  the  sound  as 
of  abundance  of  rain,  with  alarm,  and  girt  up  their  man- 
tles and  ran  before  it.  Erasmus,  no  doubt,  was  in  this 
respect  a  type  of  many:  he  was  in  theory  (at  least  in 
his  earlier  days)  a  reformer;  he  promoted  the  Reformation 
very  essentially,  and  in  a  great  variety  of  ways.  The 
perspicuity  and  neatness  of  his  style,  the  peculiar  edge 
which  he  could  put  upon  all  his  thoughts,  the  playfulness 
of  his  fancy,  the  copiousness  of  his  knowledge,  made  him  the 
most  popular  writer  of  the  age.  As  a  critic,  he  caused  Scrip- 
ture to  be  better  known  to  scholars,  by  publishing  the  first 
printed  edition  of  the  Greek  Testament:  as  a  commentator  he 
caused  it  to  be  better  understood;  though  by  some  fatality, 
as  Bishop  Bull  complains,^  he  is  prone,  like  Grotius  after 
him,  to  give  certain  important  texts  an  Arian  bias;  the  effect 
perhaps  of  a  capricious  temperament,  since  his  writings  in 
general  furnish  proof  enough  of  his  Trinitarian  orthodoxy. 

*  Sleidan,  De  Stat.  Rclig.  pp.  329.  468,  4b*9. 

t  Milner,  v.  340.  t  Bull,  Opera,  i.    fi?.  fol. 


ERASMUS.  109 

Certainly  we  ourselves  owe  him  a  debt  of  gratitude  for  his 
paraphrase  of  the  New  Testament,  a  work  which  Cranmer 
introduced  into  all  the  parish  churches  in  England,  not  in- 
deed as  faultless,  but  as  the  best  he  could  find  for  that  use, 
and  done  by  "  the  most  indifferent  writer;"*  and  mutilated 
and  moth-eaten  copies  of  it  are  still  occasionally  to  be  seen 
chained  to  their  desks.  In  his  colloquies,  too,  of  which  the 
influence  must  have  been  very  great,  he  lashes  the  abuses 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  church,  and  the  monks,  and  friars 
above  all,  as  the  authors  and  abettors  of  those  abuses,  with 
a  rod  of  nettles;  and  a  system  of  things  in  which  even  the 
most  sober  thinker  would  see  much  to  ridicule,  found  in 
Erasmus  an  assailant  who  could  discover  matter  for  merri- 
ment even  in  subjects  the  most  grave.  In  truth,  he  had 
more  wit  than  he  could  well  manage;  it  is  often  ill-timed 
and  ill-directed;!  often  he  hits  religion  itself  when  he  aims 
it  at  superstition  only;  and  whilst  he  "  shoots  his  random 
arrow  o'er  the  house,  he  hurts  a  brother.":j:  It  is  possible 
to  imagine  that  had  an  infidel  age,  instead  of  an  age  of  sound 
religious  inquiry,  inmiediately  succeeded  the  times  of  Eras- 
mus, his  levity  would  have  frequently  proved  mischievous, 
and  the  blows  which  he  had  intended  should  tell  against 
the  church  of  Rome  only,  and  which  under  Luther's  manage- 
ment did  there  spend  themselves,  would  have  been  found 
misplaced,  and  apt  to  recoil.  He  was,  perhaps,  even  more 
ambitious  of  reviving  learning  than  religion;  it  was  popish 
ignorance  as  much  as  popish  heterodoxy  that  called  him 
out.      Literature  was  what  he  lived  for.       He  could  have 

*  Burnet,  Hist,  of  Reform,  ii.  37.  fol.  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  148.  and 
Appendix  77.  1st.  ed. 

t  Witness  the  following  passage  in  a  letter  of  Erasmus  to  Ammo- 
nius,  then  at  London: — "Istis  hgereticis  vel  hoc  nomine  sum  iniquior, 
quod  instante  brumS,  nobis  auxcrint  lignorum  pretium." 

I  See  his  Convivium  Religiosum. 
10 


110  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

wished  that  such  a  scholar  as  Melanclhon,  so  splendidly- 
endowed  with  talents  for  serving  the  cause  of  letters,  had 
devoted  himself  to  letters  alone;*  and  when  at  last  he  was 
moved  to  take  an  active  part  against  the  Gospellers,  as  they 
were  called,  it  seems  to  have  been  in  some  measure  from  a 
notion  that  the  Reformation  was  absorbing  every  other  ques- 
tion, and  that  in  consequence  of  it  the  study  of  porfane  au- 
thors was  unreasonably  neglected.t  Erasmus,  however, 
as  we  have  already  hinted,  was  alarmed  at  the  commotions 
which  Luther's  innovations  threatened.  When  the  tug  of 
war  came,  he  showed  that  he  had  only  been  for  a  reforma- 
tion on  paper;  he  would  detect  abuses,  but  not  correct  them; 
he  was  desirous  of  the  end,  but  afraid  of  the  means;  he  was 
for  the  excision  of  the  pound  of  flesh,  but  then  it  must  be 
done  without  shedding  one  drop  of  blood.  Sir  Thomas 
More,  though  a  person  of  much  greater  courage,  both  moral 
and  physical,  than  Erasmus,  herein  partook  of  his  feelings; 
he  saw  the  evil,  but  could  not  see  his  way  through  it.  His 
Utopia,  written  about  the  year  1513,  when  he  was  yet 
young,  is  the  work  of  a  man  alive  to  the  corruptions  of  a 
church  of  which  he  lived  to  be  the  champion,  the  inquisitor, 
and  the  martyr.  He  could  then,  through  themedium  of 
his  ideal  republic,  and  by  the  mouth  of  an  imaginary  speaker, 
pass  censure  upon  the  monks  as  the  drones  of  society  J — re- 
duce the  number  of  the  priests  to  the  number  of  the  churches  § 

*  See   the  quotations  from  Luther's  Epistles,  given  in  Milner's 
Church  Hist,  v.  324. 

t  Ibid.  V.  337.  This  however  is  a  subject  of  regret  even  with  Lu- 
ther himself: — "Nunc  cumtam  magno  incremento  verbi  non  infelici- 
ter  sit  repurgata  doctrina  pietatis,  plerique  perdite  anhelantad  Sectas. 
Plerique  vero  non  solum  sacras  literas  sed  etiam  omves  alias  litems 
fastidinnt  et  contemnunt. — Digni  certe  qui  avoiiToj?  Galatis  conferan- 
tur." — Comment,  in  Epist.  ad  Galat.  i.  6. 

\  Utopia,  ed.  l2mo.  p.  117.  §  Id.  224. 


APPREHENSIONS   OF  MORE. 


Ill 


■advocate  the  right  of  private  judgment  f 
— exhort  that  the  work  of  conversion  should  be  done  by  per- 
suasion, but  not  coercion,  holding  the  faith  of  a  man  to  be  not 
always  an  affair  of  volition;:}:  he  could  banish  from  his  imagina- 
ry kingdom  those  who  condemned  all  heretics  to  eternal  tor- 
ments as  bigots, §  and  extend  his  principles  of  concession  even 
far  beyond  those  afterwards  adopted  by  the  author  of  the  Li- 
berty of  Prophesying,  and  to  a  degree  incompatible  with  the 
existence  of  any  religious  establishment  whatever.||  Itis  true, 
that  a  salvo  is  added  in  conclusion^  (just  as  Erasmus  would 
have  added  it  under  similar  circumstances),  that  Sir  Thomas 
More,  for  his  part,  thought  much  of  this  visionary;  but  if  so, 
why  agitate  such  questions  and  unsetde  the  minds  of  men 
to  no  purpose?     Their  author  might  indeed  be  disposed  to 
shut  his  eyes  when  he  pulled  the  trigger,  but  it  is  pretty 
clear  that  he  aimed  his  piece  at  the  church.     But  when  that 
work  was  published,  More  little  thought  what  he  should 
live  to  witness,  or  that  a  Luther  was  nigh,  even  at  the  door 
— five  years  later,  and  probably  Utopia  would  never  have 
seen  the  light;  for  the  chancellor  was  one  of  the  first  to  take 
alarm  at  the  progress  of  the  Lutheran  heresy,  and  to  pro- 
phesy no  smooth  things  concerning  it.**     He  wrote  against 
it,  attacking  Luther,  Tindall,  and  Frith,  with  great  acrimony, 
and  opposing  his  "  Supplieation  of  the  Souls  in  Purgatory," 
to  a  very  popular  pamphlet  by  one  Fish,  published  at  that 
time,  entitled  "  The  Supplication  of  Beggars,"  in  which  the 
latter  complained  that  they  were  robbed  of  their  rightful  pro- 
perty in  the  people's  alms  by  the  friars;  and  that  whereas 
the  Pope  had  it  in  his  power  to  release  souls  from  purga- 
tory for  nothing,  he  would  only  do  it  for  money;  nay,  that 

*  Utopia,  ed.  12mo.  p.  248.  t  Id.  237. 

t  Id.  234.  237.  §  Id.  233. 

II  Id.  243. 253.  IT  Id.  262. 

**  See  Life  of  Sir  T.  More,  Eccl.  Biog.  ii.  109.  112. 


1 12  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

when  he  might  extinguish  it  altogether,  by  a  general  gaol- 
delivery  of  the  spirits  in  prison,  he  still  persisted  in  tolerat- 
ing its  continuance.*  A  memorable  instance  it  is  of  the  force 
of  religious  prejudice,  that  Sir  T.  More,  placid  and  gentle 
as  was  his  natural  temper,  and  averse  as  he  had  once  shown 
himself  to  persecution  for  matters  of  opinion,  should,  never- 
theless, have  hardened  his  heart  against  the  reformers,  and 
been  more  than  consenting  to  the  death  of  Bilney  and  of 
Bainham.t  In  this  last  case,  indeed,  he  seems  to  have 
known  no  touch  of  pity;  for  in  the  hope  of  making  his 
victim  discover  his  books  and  impeach  his  acquaintance 
who  were  members  of  the  Temple,  he  whipped  him 
at  a  tree  in  his  garden  at  Chelsea,  called  the  "  tree  of 
troth,"  and  afterwards  stood  by  when  he  was  racked  in 
the  Tower.  This  is  a  sad  falling  off  from  the  tolerant 
principles  of  his  youth;  but  meanwhile  many  feverish 
years  had  passed  over  the  head  of  Sir  Thomas  More, 
and  inspired  him  with  a  dread  of  those  who  were  given  to 
change — the  crisis  which  he  had  helped  in  a  degree  to  call 
up,  had  come  at  the  call,  and  the  magician  stood  aghast  at 
the  potency  of  his  own  spell.  We  are  unfair  judges  of  the 
sentiments  and  conduct  of  men  who  lived  upon  the  verge  of 
the  Reformation.  We  are  born  when  order  has  arisen  out 
of  confusion,  and  a  pure  faith  come  forth  from  the  refiner's 
fire;  but  it  must  be  confessed,  that  before  the  event  it  was 
impossible  to  calculate  its  probable  consequences.  This 
only  was  certain,  that  in  number  they  must  be  very  many, 
in  magnitude  very  great;  and  well  might  a  wise  and  thought- 
ful man,  who  stood  upon  the  edge  of  that  heaving  sea  of 
troubles,  contemplate  the  scene  before  him  with  an  eye  of 
anxiety,  of  jealousy,  and  of  fear  for  the  issue.     Indeed  the 

*  Fox's  Acts  and  Monuments,  ii.  283. 

+  Fox,  ii.  275—297.     Burnet's  Hist.  Reform,  i.  163,  164. 


EFFECTS  OF  PRINTING.  113 

Reformation  was,  as  one  might  expect,  the  cause  of  the 
young;  a  circumstance  of  which  Sir  Thomas  More  does 
not  fail  to  take  advantage,  when,  in  his  controversy  with 
Frith  on  the  corporal  presence,  he  always  contemptuously 
speaks  of  him  as  "  this  young  man."*  And  in  a  curious 
interlude  entitled  "  Lusty  Juventus,"  written  on  the  side  of 
the  Reformation,  we  read  (loquitur  Diabolus) — t 

"  The  old  people  would  beleve  stil  in  my  lawes, 
But  the  yonger  sort  lead  them  a  contrary  way; 
Tliey  wyll  not  beleve,  they  playnly  say, 
In  old  traditions  as  made  by  men, 
But  they  wyll  'leve  as  the  Scripture  teacheth  them." 

There  was  too  much  hazard  in  it,  and  the  sacrifice  of  too 
many  early  associations,  principles,  and  prejudices,  for  gray 
hairs.     Time,  however,  that  gentle  innovator,  settled  these 
differences.     At  the  period  when  the  papal  power  was  put 
down  in  England,  nearly  twenty  years  had  elapsed  since 
Luther  first  took  up  his  parable  against  papal  abuses.     In 
this   interval,  a  generation  of  aged  defenders  of  the  ancient 
faith  had  been  gathered  to  their  fathers,  and  had  given  place 
to  such  as  had  grown  up  under  the  influence  of  a  better  star. 
The  press  had  been  active,  of  which  the  wonderful  influ- 
ence was  first  made  known  upon  this  great  question.     The 
pure  doctrines  and  heroic  deeds   of  the  German  reformers 
circulated  throughout  England.  Luther  was  in  every  mouth 
— ballads  sung  of  him.     His  writings,  together  with  those 
of  Huss,  of  Zuingle,  and  of  many  anonymous  authors  whom 
the   times  evoked,  were  clandestinely  dispersed.     Tracts, 
with  popular  titles,  such  as  "  A  booke  of  the  Olde  God  and 
New,"   "The  burying  of  the  Masse;"  "A,  B,  C,  against 

*  Fox,  Acts  and  Mon.  ii.  30G. 

t  Percy,  Reliques  of  Ancient  Poetry,  ii.  285,  and  Warton's  Hist,  of 
English  Poetry,  iii.  201. 

10* 


114  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  Clergy,"  made  their  appeals  to  the  people.  The  con- 
fessions of  some  of  the  more  eminent  Lollards,  and  exposi- 
tions of  particular  chapters  of  Scripture,  which  were  thought 
to  militate  the  most  strongly  against  the  errors  of  Rome, 
were  industriously  scattered  abroad.  Above  all,  Tindall's 
translation  of  the  New  Testament  was  now  in  the  hands  of 
many;  for  the  price,  as  compared  with  that  of  Wickliffe's  a 
century  before,  was  just  forty-fold  less*;  and  by  means  of 
it,  the  multitude  were  enabled  to  compare  what  the  Gospel 
actually  was,  with  what  Rome  had  made  it  by  traditions.! 
The  art  of  printing  in  this  age  of  the  revival  of  the  Gospel, 
answered  in  some  measure  to  the  miraculous  gift  of  tongues 
in  the  age  of  its  first  publication.  It  was  soon  perceived, 
that  if  the  pope  did  not  put  an  end  to  the  press,  the  press 
would  put  an  end  to  the  pope.  Awkward  attempts  were 
made  to  defeat  its  labours.  It  was  a  new  principle  introduced 
into  the  social  system,  which  in  its  application,  after  the  ex- 
perience of  three  centuries,  is  found  to  involve  many  diffi- 
culties, and  with  which,  at  that  time  of  day,  neither  its 
friends  nor  its  foes  knew  how  to  deal.  Tonstall,  bishop  of 
London,  a  man  of  a  very  different  spirit  from  his  brutal  suc- 
cessor Bonner,  bought  up  all  the  copies  of  Tindall's  Trans- 
lation, and  burnt  them  up  at  Paul's  Cross:!  a  humane  but 
useless  measure;  for  it  soon  appeared,  that  unless  he  could 
buy  up  ink,  paper,  and  types,  he  was  only  making  himself 
Tindall's  best  customer.  Accordingly,  a  new  edition  spee- 
dily issued  from  the  Antwerp  press,  in  which  former  errors 
were  corrected;  and  though  one  golden  branch  had  been 
torn  away,  another,  not  of  the  same  but  of  a  better  metal, 
succeeded  it.  The  importation  of  these  foreign  wares  was 
strictly  forbidden;  but  there  was  a  demand  for  them  in  the 

*  Wordsworth's  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  286. 

t  Fox,  ii.  363.  ^  Ibid.  li.  296. 


EFFECTS  OF  PRINTING.  115 

country,  and  they  were  smuggled  notwithstanding.  Pro- 
clamations were  uttered  against  the  possessors  of  all  heretical 
writings,  but  they  were  set  at  nought.*  Spies  were  encou- 
raged; the  husband  tempted  to  betray  the  wife,  the  parent 
the  child,  and  a  man^s  foes  became  literally  those  of  his  own 
household.!  Nay,  more,  by  a  refinement  in  cruelty,  the 
strongest  instincts  of  nature  were  outraged,  and  a  daughter 
was  compelled  to  fire  the  fagots  with  her  own  hands,  by 
which  her  father  was  to  be  burned.:^:  But  measures  like 
these  were  only  calculated  to  defeat  the  object  which  they 
were  intended  to  promote. 

Strong  public  feeling,  when  matured  in  its  growth  and 
righteous  in  its  principle,  cannot  be  effectually  suppressed 
— check  it,  and  it  rages  impatiently;  whilst,  if  its  fair  course 
be  not  hindered,  it  may  only  make  sweet  music. 

*  Fox,  ii.  286.  t  Wordsworth's  Eccl.  Biog.  i.  292. 

t  Fox,  pp.  759.  1240. 


116 


CHAPTER  VII. 

CRANMER. THE  DIVORCE. THE  SUPREMACY. 

We  have  now  touched  upon  a  few  of  the  many  elements 
which  were  secretly  at  work  preparing  England  for  a  refor- 
mation of  religion,  and  without  some  regarjl  to  which  it 
would  be  impossible  to  account  for  the  rapid  pace  at  which 
it  was  consummated:  let  us  but  shut  our  eyes  to  this  under- 
current of  events — take  our  stand  at  the  accession  of  Henry 
the  Eighth — and  endeavour  to  guess  at  the  future;  and  what 
could  seem  to  us  more  improbable,  than  that  a  reign  so  begun 
was  destined  to  effect  the  extinction  of  the  papal  power  in 
England?  Henry  mounted  the  throne  with  a  treasury  full  to 
overflowing,  the  fruits  of  a  revenue  improved  by  the  wisdom 
of  his  father's  laws,  by  the  care  with  which  that  sagacious 
monarch  husbanded  the  nation's  purse,  and,  it  must  be  added, 
by  the  rapacity  of  Dudley  and  Empson,  his  fiscal  officers; 
who  then  would  conjecture  that  an  exhausted  exchequer 
was  to  drive  him  to  the  plunder  of  the  church,  in  order  to 
continue  the  profusion  which  its  affluence  had  taught  him? 
— He  had  mounted  the  throne  a  zealous  papist  and  a  learned, 
having  been  himself  intended,  it  was  said,  for  the  see  of 
of  Canterbury,  had  not  the  death  of  his  elder  brother  put  the 
crown  upon  his  head  instead  of  the  mitre;  ambitious, 
moreover,  of  papal  distinctions,  and  eventually  able  to  pro- 
cure them  by  entering  the  lists  with  Luther  as  a  volunteer 
champion  of  the  ancient  creed;  who  would  then  conjecture 
that  the  title  of  "  Defender  of  the  Faith,"  in  the  sense  in 
which  it  was  conferred  upon  him,  was  the  very  last  to 
which  he  was  to  have  a  just  claim? — He  mounted  the 
throne,  having  Katherine,  his  brother's  widow,  for  his  wife 


DIVORCE  OF  KATHERINE. 


117 


by  a  dispensation  from  the  Pope,  who  counted  it  the  ratifi- 
cation of  his  own  authority  in  England,  that  her  very  princes 
were  thenceforth  to  derive  their  title  to  the  crown  from  the 
vahdity  of  this  his  bull;  who  then  would  conjecture  that 
this  stroke  of  policy,  as  it  was  thought,  for  which  a  point 
had  been  strained  at  Rome,  was  to  be  precisely  the  ruin  of 
the  politician,  and  that  the  subversion  of  papal  usurpation 
in  England  would  be  actually  effected  by  the  very  measure 
which  was  to  have  confirmed  it?  Amongst  the  distinctive 
marks  by  which  God's  hand  may  be  perceived  regulating 
human  affairs,  this,  says  Barrow,  in  his  noble  sermon  on  a 
special  Providence,*  is  one — "  the  wonderful  strangeness  of 
events  compared  with  the  ordinary  course  of  things,  or  the 
natural  influence  of  causes:  when  effects  are  performed  by 
no  visible  means,  or  by  means  disproportionate,  unsuitable, 
repugnant  to  the  effect:" — and  surely,  when  tried  by  such 
a  criterion,  nothing  can  furnish  stronger  evidence  of  a 
work  which  "  was  not  of  man  but  of  God,"  than  the  events 
which  immediately  preceded  the  Reformation,  and  the  con- 
sequences which  flowed  from  them.  It  might  seem  that  a 
question  concerning  the  king's  marriage  was  the  most  un- 
likely thing  in  the  world  to  set  this  great  cause  in  motion — 
yet  such  was  the  fact. — Henry,  after  living  nearly  twenty 
years  with  Katherine,  felt,  or  affected  to  feel,  scruples  as  to 
the  lawfulness  of  marrying  a  brother's  widow.  Whether 
the  exception  which  was  taken  against  the  legitimacy  of  the 
Princess  Mary  by  the  French  ambassador  when  the  marriage 
between  her  and  the  Duke  of  Orleans  came  under  discus- 
sion, was  honestly  made  and  did  in  reality  open  Henry's 
eyes  to  a  new  view  of  his  own  position — whether  Wolsey 
started  the  objections  which  unsettled  the  King's  mind,  with 
the  intention  of  serving  his  own  ends  by  thwarting  the 

*  Serm.  xi.  on  the  Gunpowder  Treason. 


118  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Emperor  the  Queen's  nephew,  and  providing  the  King  with 
a  match  more  agreeable  to  himself — whether  the  death  of 
the  Queen's  untimely  offspring  with  a  single  exception,  did 
as  he  pretended,  fill  him  with  concern  as  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  Levitical  law,  "  that  if  a  man  take  his  brother's 
wife  it  is  an  unclean  thing;  they  shall  be  childless;" — or 
whether,  on  the  other  hand,  he  was  weary  of  a  wife  whose 
ascetic  devotions  might  seem  to  fit  her  more  for  a  convent 
than  a  court,  whilst  her  person,  not  attractive  at  best,  was 
now  rendered  less  so  by  increasing  infirmities; — or,  lastly, 
whether  the  charms  of  Ann  BuUen  had  conjured  up  in  him 
his  strong  sense  of  the  sin  he  had  committed  in  uniting 
himself  with  Katherine,  as  may  be  imagined  without  any 
great  breach  of  charity  of  a  man,  whose  conscience,  upon 
other  occasions,  besides  this,  seems  to  have  been  singularly 
ill-timed  in  its  suggestions — so  it  was,  that  a  divorce  was 
determined  upon,  and  measures  were  adopted  to  carry  the 
determination  into  effect.  Opinions  were  divided;  the  sexes 
in  general  took  opposite  sides;  but  the  learned  themselves  were 
not  agreed. — on  the  one  hand,  it  was  argued  that  the  prohibi- 
tion of  such  a  marriage  was  clear  in  the  Levitical  law,t  and 
such  prohibition  was  not  to  be  considered  as  confined  to  the 
Jews,  for  that  the  violation  of  it  is  expressly  numbered 
among  the  sins  of  the  Canaanites  by  which  the  land  was 
polluted,:}:  and  therefore  that  it  was  of  universal  obligation; 
moreover,  that  John  the  Baptist  declared  of  Herod,  that  it 
was  "  not  lawful  for  him  to  have  his  brother's  wife;"  that 
John,  therefore,  held  the  law  of  Moses  upon  this  point  to 
be  still  binding;§ — that  in  the  same  manner  St.  Paul  con- 
demned the  Corinthian  convert  of  a  fornication  not  so  much 
as  named  among  the  Gentiles,  "  in  that  he  had  his  father's 

*  Levit.  XX.  21.  f  Ibid,  xviii.  15. 

t  Ibid.  24.  §  Matt.  xiv.  4. 


ARGUMENT  ON  THE  DIVORCE.  119 

wife;"*  which  like  the  other  was  one  of  the  degrees  for- 
bidden in  Leviticus,  and  forbidden  in  the  very  same  chapter 
of  Leviticus  as  the  relation  in  question;! — that  St.  Paul, 
therefore,  pronounced  the  Mosaical  law,  in  tliese  particulars, 
still  to  stand  good. 

On  the  other  side,  it  was  replied,  that  the  Levitical  pre- 
cept must  be  understood,  of  not  taking  a  brother's  wife 
whilst  he  was  living,  for  that  the  brother  was  actually  en- 
joined to  take  the  brother's  widow,  he  having  died  childless 
and  to  raise  up  seed  unto  his  brother;^ — that  with  regard  to 
Herod,  he  was  guilty  in  the  case  of  Herodias,  not  of  incest 
but  of  adultery — Philip,  as  seems  probable  from  Josephus, 
being  yet  alive; — that  the  like  must  be  said  of  the  Corinthian 
delinquent,  "  fornication  not  to  be  named  among  the  Gen- 
tiles," implying  that  the  offence  was  committed  in  his 
father's  life-time,  since,  otherwise  the  connection,  however 
monstrous,  was  not  unknown  among  the  Persians,  and  that 
even  amongst  the  Jews  Adonijah  had  desired  Abishag  in 
in  marriage.§ 

To  this  it  was  rejoined, — that  the  exception  in  the  gene- 
ral law  proved  only  that  God  might  dispense  with  his  own 
ordinances  for  his  own  ends,  and  that  the  end  in  this  case 
was,  the  preservation  of  a  family  in  Israel,  and  care  for  the 
protection  of  the  genealogy  of  the  future  Messiah,  objects 
now  accomplished,  and  the  means  thereto  now  superseded; 
— that  in  Herod's  affair,  it  cannot  be  with  certainty  affirmed 
that  when  he  married  Herodias,  Philip  was  living,  that  she 
certainly  deserted  her  former  husband,  but  that  she  was 
probably  divorced  from  h^im;  and  that  for  aught  which  ap- 
pears to  the  contrary,  Josephus  who  condemns  her  conduct 
as  an  infraction  of  the  law,  understands,  when  he  does  so, 
her  marriage  with  her  husband's  brother,  he  not  having  left 

*  1  Cor.  vi.  1.  t  Ibid,  xviii.  8. 

t  Deut.  XXV.  5.  §  1  Kings,  ii,  17. 


120  REFORIVIA.TION  IN  ENGLAND. 

her  childless;* — that  the  case  of  the  Corinthian  does  not  ad- 
mit of  the  interpretation  that  he  took  his  father's  wife  before  his 
father's  death,  for  that  the  seventh  commandment  alone  was 
provision  enough  against  such  an  abuse,  and  that  the  eigh- 
teenth chapter  of  Leviticus,  in  which  this  and  similar  abomi- 
nations are  forbidden,  and  to  which  St.  Paul  has  here  an  eye, 
must  have  contemplated  something  distinct  from  adultery,  and 
does  in  fact  contemplate  the  case  of  incestuous  alliance. 

Much  more  was  said.  But  the  question  was  not  debated 
upon  scriptural  grounds  only.  The  fathers,  the  schoolmen, 
and  the  Pope's  decretals  were  all  brought  into  the  contro- 
versy, and  a  case  under  no  circumstances  very  simple  be- 
came immeasurably  complicated.  It  was  at  this  period, 
about  the  year  1529,  that  the  King  being  upon  a  journey, 
chanced  to  pass  a  night  at  Waltham-Cross;  on  this  occasion 
it  fell  to  the  lot  of  two  of  his  servants,  to  sleep  at  the  house 
of  one  Mr.  Cressy,  of  Waltham,  where  the  conversation  at 
the  supper-table  happened  to  turn  upon  the  great  topic  of 
the  day— the  royal  divorce.  Of  the  party,  was  a  fellow  of 
Jesus'  College,  Cambridge,  whom  the  plague  had  driven 
from  the  University,  and  who  had  taken  up  his  quar- 
ters meanwhile  at  Mr.  Cressy's  house,  being  a  relation 
of  his  wife,  and  the  tutor  of  his  children;  his  opinion  was 
asked,  he  being  a  learned  academician, — it  went  to  this,  that 
the  question  was  one  concerning  the  meaning  of  Scripture 
and  nothing  else;  and  that  of  this,  men  of  learning,  and  the 
Universities  more  especially,  would  be  the  fittest  judges;  for 
'*  that  the  Bishop  of  Rome  had  no  such  authority  as  where- 
by he  might  dispense  with  the  word  of  God."  Here  were 
some  great  principles  involved;  Scripture  set  up  as  the  rule 
of  action;  the  interpretation  of  it  asserted  to  be  matter  of  pri- 
vate right;  and  the  Pope  himself  declared  not  to  be  above 

*  Josepli.  Antiq.  lib,  xviii.  §  6,  p.  807. 


RISE  OF  CRANMBR.  121 

it.  The  sentiment  was  reported  to  the  King,  already  wea- 
ried with  his  "  infinite  cause,"  as  he  called  it;  and  the  au- 
thor of  it,  much  against  his  own  will,  was  sent  for  to  court 
— it  was  Cranmer. 

"  How  far  God  fetches  his  purposes  about!"  is  the  con- 
templation of  Bishop  Hall  on  the  manner  of  Saul's  call  to 
the  kingly  office.  "  The  asses  of  Kish,  Saul's  father,  are 
strayed  away;  what  is  that  to  the  news  of  a  kingdom?  But 
God  lays  these  small  accidents  for  the  ground  of  greater  de- 
signs."* The  sickness  at  Cambridge,  the  moment  at  which 
it  occurred,  the  trifle  which  determined  Waltham  above  all 
places  for  the  retreat  of  Cranmer,  the  casual  sojourn  of  the 
king  there  for  a  single  night,  the  house  of  all  the  houses  to 
which  his  secretary  and  almoner  were  directed  for  their  eve- 
ning's lodging,  and  the  subject-matter  of  the  conversation, 
incidents,  most  of  them  inconsiderable  in  themselves,  and 
independent  of  one  another,  yet  all  conspiring  to  call  out  of 
obscurity  probably  the  fittest,  perhaps  the  only  fit  man  in 
the  whole  kingdom,  for  superintending  ecclesiastical  aifairs 
at  a  crisis  so  pecuHar — this  is  altogether  a  combination  of 
circumstances,  which  it  may  be  philosophy  to  call  a  chap- 
ter of  accidents,  but  which  it  is  not  superstition  to  ascribe 
to  the  finger  of  "  a  God  that  governs  the  earth."  With  so 
splendid  an  instance  before  our  eyes,  that  opinion  can 
scarcely  be  treated  with  disrepect,  which  holds  the  call  to 
the  ministry  to  be  in  some  degree,  though  certainly  in  a  sub- 
ordinate degree,  external;  to  be  the  voice  of  events  which 
have  been  so  ordered  as  to  guide  the  party  to  his  novitiate, 
and  to  land  him  at  last  in  the  priestly  office.  But  this  by 
the  way.  Cranmer  had  been  a  hard  student,  and  in  the 
subjects  of  his  study  had  kept  pace  with  the  times  in  which 
he  lived.     He  began,  where  most  scholars  in  those  days 

*  Contemplations,  lib.  xii. 
11 


122  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

ended,  with  Duns  Scotus  and  the  subtle  doctors,  a  discipline 
which  had  at  least  the  merit  of  making  astute  disputants; 
and,  as  Bishop  Berkeley  said  of  academical  learning  in  gene- 
ral, miglit  serve  even  when  forgotten,  like  a  crop  when 
ploughed  under,  to  improve  and  enrich  the  soil.*  Escaped 
from  the  schools,  he  betook  himself  to  the  writings  of  Eras- 
mus, for  whom  he  seems  ever  to  have  entertained  a  strong 
personal  regard,  perhaps  as  being  the  author  who  first 
opened  his  eyes.  Luther  absorbed  him  in  his  turn;  and  now 
the  controversy  between  that  reformer  and  his  opponents 
being  serious,  agitating  matters  no  less  than  the  fundamen- 
tals of  the  Christian  faith  (agitur  de  vita  et  sanguine),  the 
appeal  moreover  being  made  to  Scripture  alone,  Cranmer 
set  himself  resolutely  to  the  examination  of  the  word  of 
God,  that  he  might  qualify  himself  for  exercising  a  sound 
judgment  on  these  high  arguments;  and  of  the  patience,  the 
learning,  the  discrimination,  with  which  he  did  this,  the  Li- 
turgy of  our  church  (were  there  no  other)  would  be  an 
everlasting  monument,  in  which,  whoever  will  be  at  the 
pains  of  taking  a  prayer  or  a  clause  to  pieces,  will  find  occa- 
sion to  wonder  at  the  masterly  knowledge  of  the  Bible  which 
the  selection  even  of  some  single  expression  often  betrays, 
so  that  having  pursued  happily,  as  he  thinks,  some  intricate 
point  of  theology  through  windings  manifold,  and  having 
arrived  at  a  conclusion  which  he  almost  fancies  his  very 
own,  he  will  be  surprised  to  find  that  our  reformer  has  been 
beforehand  with  him  even  in  this,  and  has  given  some  un- 
obtrusive indication  of  his  being  in  possession  of  the  secret 


*  The  Querist,  §  198.  A  work  containing-  perhaps  as  much  genu- 
ine humour,  as  many  sagacious  guesses  at  the  real  causes  of  various 
social  and  political  evils  affecting  commonwealths,  Ireland  in  particular 
(for  it  is  written  for  the  benefit  of  that  country),  and  as  many  shrewd 
and  practical  hints  for  the  removal  of  them,  as  any  in  our  language. 


LEARNING  OF  CRANMER.  123 

by  a  word  in  season  dropped  out  of  his  abundance  as  he 
passes  on  his  way. 

Such  was  the  man  whom  the  accidents  we  have  recounted 
introduced  to  King  Henry.  Henry  commanded  him  to 
digest  in  writing  the  substance  of  what  he  had  uttered  on 
the  question  of  the  divorce,  and  committed  him  to  the  hos- 
pitality of  the  Earl  of  Wiltshire,  the  most  accomplished 
nobleman  of  the  day,  the  father  of  A;nn  Bullen,  where  that 
friendship  was  formed  between  the  future  archbishop  and 
the  future  queen,* which  still  further  promoted  the  cause  of 
the  Reformation,  and  disposed  the  latter  to  be  in  heart,  as 
well  as  in  principle,  a  nursing  mother  to  the  infant  church. 

Meanwhile  the  King's  cause,  which  had  been  submitted 
in  an  early  stage  of  it  to  the  Pope's  decision,  had  made 
small  progress.  Cardinal  Campejus  had  been  united  in  a 
commission  with  Wolsey  to  try  it  in  England,  but  there 
was  no  serious  intention  of  ever  giving  judgment.  What- 
ever hand  Wolsey  might  have  had  in  stirring  the  question 
at  first,  he  soon  found  that  he  should  not  be  able  to  substi- 
tute for  Katharine  a  queen  of  his  own;  and  though  not  a 
cordial  churchman,  nor  caring  about  giving  offence  to 
churchmen,  nor  very  nice  upon  the  sin  of  sacrilege  (for  his 
example  was  afterwards  quoted  in  the  dissolution  of  the  ab- 
beys), still  he  was  not  desirous  of  exchanging  even  the 
most  rigorous  Romanist  for  a  Lutheran,  and  he  tlierefore 
was  lukewarm  in  the  prosecution  of  the  suit.  His  col- 
league had  his  private  instructions  and  private  interests  too. 
The  affair  was  embarrassing  to  the  Pope:  he  could  not  de- 
cide without  exasperating  an  Emperor  of  Germany  or  a 
King  of  England,  and  he  seems  to  have  halted  between  the 
two,  hoping  perhaps  that  some  propitious  accident  of  death 
or  disaster  might  intervene  to  release  him  from  his  unplea- 
sant dilemma.  Accordingly,  the  judgment  of  the  commis- 
sioners is  expected  from  day  to  day;  the  court  meets,  de- 


124  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

liberates,  examines  witnesses,  and  determines  nothing.  It 
was  for  the  credit  of  the  King-  that  matters  should  not  seem 
to  be  done  in  heat  or  haste.  The  Queen  was  to  be  cited; 
on  her  non-appearance,  to  be  pronounced  contumacious;  a 
fresh  citation  to  be  issued;  a  reservation  to  be  made  of  some 
collateral  question  for  the  Pope's  own  decision;  the  sittings 
of  the  court  to  follow  the  rules  of  the  Consistory  of  Rome, 
of  which  it  was  but  a  branch,  and  the  cause  to  be  suspended 
during  the  vacations  at  Rome;  finally,  the  commission  was 
to  be  closed,  and  the  whole  process  to  be  transferred  to  the 
hearing  of  the  Pontiff  himself,  and  the  King  and  Queen  to 
appear  before  him  in  person  or  by  proxy.  But  this  last 
was  an  alternative  to  which  the  King  had  too  high  a  sto- 
mach to  submit,  who  pleaded  the  prerogative  of  his  crown, 
which  did  not  allow  of  being  subjected  to  foreign  jurisdic- 
tion, and  the  liberties  of  his  people,  which  demanded  that 
questions  of  marriage  should  be  tried  at  home  and  by  their 
own  church.*  Thus  passed  away  six  long  years  in  fruit- 
less negotiations,  till  Henry,  having  now  secured  the  opi- 
nion of  nearly  all  the  universities  at  home  and  abroad  in  his 
favour,  a  measure  which  Cranmer,  whom  he  had  sent  upon 
the  Continent  as  his  champion  for  this  purpose,  had  been 
very  instrumental  in  accomplishing,  as  well  as  the  verdict 
of  the  most  distinguished  individuals  amongst  the  divines 
and  scholars  of  Europe,  gave  proof  that  the  "  strong  blood" 
of  the  Plantagenets  was  in  his  veins,  took  the  law  into  his 
own  hands,  married  Ann  BuUen  probably  on  the  14th  No- 
vember, 1532,  and  set  the  Pope  at  defiance. 

On  reviewing  the  question  of  the  divorce  (as  by  a  mis- 
nomer it  has  been  called),  there  can  be  little  doubt,  we  sup- 
pose, that  the  marriage  was  in  the  first  instance  unlawful. 
The  authorities  which  declared  it  so  preponderated  at  the 

*  Burnet,  Hist.  Reform,  lib.  i.  125.  fol. 


MARRIAGE  OF  ANN  BULLEN.  125 

time  of  the  discussion;  many,  and  amongst  others  Arch- 
bishop Warham,  had  protested  against  the  match  when  it 
was  originally  proposed;  and  when  the  canon  of  prohibited 
degrees  was  afterwards  adjusted  by  Archbishop  Parker,  it 
was  expressly  determined  that  a  man  may  not  marry  his 
brother's  wife.  If,  therefore,  the  conduct  of  Henry  had 
been  such  in  other  respects  as  to  give  token  of  a  scrupulous 
conscience,  it  might  have  been  credited  that  in  this  instance 
he  was  sincere  in  his  professions  of  uneasiness;  and  that 
believing  Katharine  and  himself  to  be  joined  together  other- 
wise than  God's  word  doth  allow,  he  sought  for  relief  in 
the  dissolution  of  the  contract.  But  that  contract  was  en- 
tered into  with  deliberation;  it  was  made  when  the  King 
was  a  minor — it  was  repea'ed  and  ratified  when  he  was  of 
just  age;  the  objections,  whatever  they  were,  were  not  new; 
they  had  been  raised  and  over-ruled,  when  Katharine  was 
to  be  the  bride,  when  she  had  youth  to  plead  for  her,  and  a 
dower  of  unparalleled  magnitude,  the  first  fruits  of  the  trans- 
Atlantic  treasures  of  Spain:  it  was  only  when  these  advo- 
cates were  no  more,  her  blossom  faded,  and  her  golden  fruit 
gathered  and  gone,  that  the  objections  (valid  in  themselves) 
became  fatal.  Her  lot  in  life  was  indeed  hard;  but  her  grave 
at  least  has  been  strewed  with  immortal  flowers;  and  "  the 
meek  sorrows  and  virtuous  distress  of  Katharine  have  fur- 
nished some  scenes  (says  no  mean  critic)  which  may  be 
justly  reckoned  amongst  the  greatest  efforts  of  tragedy." 

And  now.  Archbishop  Warham  being  sick  unto  death, 
the  King  intimates  to  Cranmer,  who  was  engaged  in  his 
service  on  the  Continent,  his  intention  of  promoting  him 
to  the  primacy.  There  are  some  men  who  seek  honours, 
and  some  who  have  honours  thrust  upon  them:  Cranmer 
belonged  to  the  latter  class;  he  was  not  prepared  for  so 
great  and  sudden  an  elevation.  Under  pretence  that  the 
11* 


126  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

King's  affairs  still  required  his  presence  abroad,  he  tarried 
six  months  longer,  in  the  hope  that  Henry  might  consign 
the  crosier  to  some  other  hand.*  There  was  no  affectation 
in  this — no  fuga  ad  salices.  Ambition  is  made  of  sterner 
stuff  than  the  spirit  of  Cranmer.  Even  at  an  age  when 
such  a  passion,  if  ever,  must  have  been  most  active,  and 
when  he  was  as  yet  without  a  patron,  he,  like  Parker,  de- 
clined the  offer  of  a  fellowship  in  cardinal  Wolsey's  college 
at  Oxford,  preferring  the  society  of  his  old  friends,  or  fel- 
low-students, to  the  more  splendid  prospects  which,  a  con- 
nection with  the  great  favourite  of  tlie  day  presented;  and 
even  risking  his  displeasure  rather  than  do  violence  to  his 
own  early  associations,  and  bid  adieu  to  the  scenes  of  his 
boyhood  and  his  youth.  Neither  was  it  of  his  own  good 
will  that  he  was  in  the  first  instance  brought  under  the 
King's  notice,  by  the  question  of  the  divorce; — on  the  con- 
trary, he  quarrelled  with  his  friends  who  had  thus  disturbed 
his  repose,  pleaded  that  it  was  a  matter  on  which  he  had 
bestowed  no  pains  or  study,  and  begged  in  vain  that  he 
might   be  excused   the  honour   of  being  closeted  with  a 


*  Dr.  Lingard  asserts  that  there  were  few  instances  of  the  see  of 
Canterbury  being  filled  so  soon  after  a  vacancy.  Yet  Archbishop 
Bredwardin  died  August  26,  1349,  and  Islip  was  appointed  his  suc- 
cessor by  a  papal  bull,  dated  October  7,  1349,  and  was  consecrated 
December  20th.  Archbishop  Arundel  died  February  19  or  20,  1413; 
Chichele  succeeded  March  4,  and  received  his  pall  in  July.  Chicheld 
died  April  12,  1443;  Stafford  succeeded  him  by  a  bull  dated  May  15, 
and  was  consecrated  in  August.  Stafford  died  in*  June  or  July  1452; 
Kemp  succeeded  by  bull  dated  July  21,  and  on  September  22,  received 
his  cross.  Kemp  died  March  22,  1543,  Bourchier  was  elected  April 
22,  and  received  the  bull  of  confirmation  August  22.  Langton  died 
January  27,  1500;  Dean  was  elected  in  April,  and  confirmed  May  26. 

See  Mr.  Todd's  Introduction  to  Cranmer's  Defence  of  the  Sacra- 
ment, p.  xxxvii. 


cranmer's  protest.  127 

king.*  Nor,  indeed,  were  the  times  such  as  promised  the 
head  which  wore  the  mitre  an  office  of  ease.  Likely  it  was 
to  prove  but  "  a  glistering  grief," — "  a  golden  sorrow,"  to 
the  wearer;  and  it  wanted  no  great  sagacity  to  forsee  (what 
the  King  told  Cranmer  when  he  afterwards  changed  his 
arms)  that  the  pelican  was  fitter  for  his  crest  than  the  crane: 
seeing  that  "  he  would  one  day  have  to  shed  his  blood  for 
his  young  ones,  if  he  stood  to  his  tackling."!  But  there 
was  yet  another  and  a  stronger  reason  for  Cranmer  holding 
back; — the  scruples  he  entertained  touching  the  oath  of 
fidelity  to  the  Pope,  which  was  exacted  of  an  archbishop  at 
his  presentation.  As  yet  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope  was 
acknowledged;  and  though  the  subject  had  been  mooted  two 
years  before,  and  even  the  title  of  supreme  head  of  the 
church  and  clergy  of  England  had  been  ascribed  to  Henry 
by  the  convocation  under  Archbishop  Warham,  in  1530,  it 

*  Mr.  Ellis  remarks,  (Original  Letters,  vol.  ii.  p.  47,)  that  upon  Wol- 
sey's  fail,  Henry  pressed  the  chancellorship  upon  Cranmer,  more  than 
once,  before  he  offered  it  to  Sir  Thomas  More.  Had  it  been  so,  the 
refusal  would  but  have  been  of  a  piece  with  the  rest  of  Cranmer's  pri- 
vate history;  and,  accordingly,  we  had  once  adduced  this  fact  us  a 
further  argument  of  his  unambitious  spirit — but  it  has  been  pointed 
out  to  us  by  a  high  authority  in  ecclesiastical  history,  that  Mr.  Ellis 
has  here  mistaken  Warham  for  Cranmer.  Both  the  words  of  Erasmus's 
letter  (which  is  the  reference,  Epist.  lib.  xxvi.  55,)  and  its  date 
prove  this  to  be  the  case.  It  is  there  said,  that  the  chancellorship  was 
offered  more  than  once  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  that  he 
excused  himself  on  the  plea  of  age.  Nuw,  the  date  of  the  letter  being 
January  1531,  Cranmer  was  not  then  Archbishop,  but  Warham  who 
died  in  August  1532;  moreover,  Cranmer  was  at  tliat  time  only  in  his 
42d  year,  and  therefore  could  not  possibly  consider  himself  too  old  for 
the  office.  We  notice  a  solitary  error,  for  the  sake  of  having  an  op- 
portunity of  expressing  our  thanks  to  Mr.  Ellis,  for  the  invaluable  ma- 
terials for  English  history  which  his  researches  have  brought  to  light 
and  the  very  instructive  notes  with  which  they  are  accompanied. 

t  Strype's  Cranmer,  456. 


128  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

was  reluctantly,  and  was  not  immediately  followed  up. 
Here,  therefore,  Cranmer  was  embarrassed.  The  oath,  how- 
ever, he  took  under  a  previous  public*  protestation,  "  that  he 
did  not  admit  the  Pope's  authority  any  further  than  it 
agreed  with  the  express  word  of  God;  and  that  it  might  be 
lawful  for  him  at  all  times  to  speak  against  him,  and  to  im- 
pugn his  errors  when  there  should  be  occasion."!  The 
honesty  of  this  proceeding  has  been  often  made  the  subject 
of  debate;  and  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  it  presents 
some  symptoms  of  a  mind  yet  scarcely  escaped  from  the 
dangerous  casuistry  of  the  Roman  Catholic  doctors; — some 
touch  of  that  Jesuitical  spirit  which  is  so  effectually  exposed 
in  the  letters  of  Pascal;  and  against  the  insidious  approaches 
of  which  even  the  native  integrity  of  the  single-hearted 
Cranmer  was  not  altogether  proof.  In  this  instance,  as  in 
the  instance  of  Sir  T.  More's  persecutions,  and  indeed  of 
his  own,  it  was  a  corrupted  and  corrupting  creed  that  was 
in  fault,  rather  than  an  evil  heart  or  evil  eye  in  the  indi- 
viduals themselves.  Still  many  circumstances  may  be 
pleaded  in  extenuation  of  Crannier's  conduct.  He  did  not 
take  the  Pope  by  surprise;  the  name,  the  writings,  and  the 
person  of  Cranmer,  were  familiar  to  him;  Cranmer  had 
openly  contended  against  his  dispensing  power  in  the  case 
of  the  divorce  both  in  Germany,  and  at  Rome  itself,  nearly 
three  years  before;  so  that  even  had  no  protest  been  made 
on  his  part,  the  Pope  must  have  been  aware  of  the  character 
and  opinions  of  the  man;  and  if  he  admitted  him  to  the 

*  The  publicity  of  this  proceeding  is  clearly  proved  in  Mr.  Todd's 
Life  of  Cranmer,  vol.  i.  p.  65.  It  is  so  far  of  importance,  as  it  shows 
that  the  three  Bishops — Lincoln,  Exeter,  and  St.  Asaph,  (the  last  of 
them,  Dr.  Standish,  a  most  zealous  catholic,) — vi'ho  were  fixed  upon 
to  consecrate  Cranmer,  had  the  opportunity  of  refusing  him  consecra- 
tion  had  they  thought  proper. 

t  Id.  p.  17. 


OATHS  TO  THE  POPE  AND  KING.  129 

primacy,  he  m  ust  have  been  conscious  that  he  did  it  at  his 
peril.  The  truth  was,  the  pope  had  no  choice,  and  he  felt 
that  he  had  none:  d  oubtless  he  would  have  been  too  glad 
to  reject  the  King's  candidate  and  to  substitute  for  him  a 
creature  of  his  own;  but  he  knew  with  whom  he  had  to 
deal  in  Henry,  not  with  a  tame  monarch,  and  with  what 
he  had  to  deal  in  England,  no  longer  with  a  tame  people. 
He  knew  that  the  very  point  at  issue,  the  necessity  of  his 
bull  at  all  to  legalise  the  appointment  to  the  see  of  Canter- 
bury, was  even  then  disputed,  and  that  to  withhold  it  under 
such  circumstances  would  be  merely  to  hasten  the  crisis 
which  he  had  too  much  reason  to  think  was  in  any  case  at 
hand,  the  loss  of  his  supremacy.  The  event  proved  this. 
He  did  not  refuse  the  bull,  (not  that  he  was  aware  of  Cran- 
mer's  protest  at  the  time;  but  of  Cranmer's  character, 
which  was  equivalent  to  it,  he  was  perfectly  aware,)  and  ac- 
cordingly he  staved  off  the  evil  that  menaced  him  for  one 
year  more,  but  it  was  only  for  one  year.  This  was  the 
last  bull  he  sent  into  England  during  the  reign  of  Henry; 
and  had  that  capricious  prince  listened  to  the  advice  and  en- 
treaty of  Cranmer,  application  would  not  have  been  made 
even  for  this,*  and  then  Henry  would  have  been  sooner 
spared  the  dishonour  of  subjecting  his  bishops  to  a  dilemma 
by  which  perjury  to  the  Pope  or  to  the  King  could  scarcely 
be  escaped,  and  Cranmer  would  have  been  spared  the 
equivocation  by  which  he  laboured  to  reconcile  oaths  which 
were  irreconcilable.  Here,  after  all,  w^as  the  grievance, 
and  on  those  who  exacted  them  was,  in  a  great  measure, 
the  guilt.  Nothing  less  was  required  of  a  bishop  than  to 
swear  allegiance  to  two  masters,  who  had  no  two  interests  in 
common: — to  the  Pope;  that  he  would,  from  that  hour  for- 
ward, be  faithful  and  obedient  to  St.  Peter  and  to  the  holy 

*  Strype,  Cran.  p.  17, 


130  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

church  of  Rome,  to  my  Lord  the  Pope  and  his  succes- 
sors; that  they  should  suffer  no  wrong  by  any  means  with 
his  advice,  consent,  or  connivance,  that  their  counsel  he 
would  not  discover,  their  regality  he  would  help,  maintain 
and  defend,  against  all  men;  their  rights,  honours,  privi- 
leges, authorities,  he  would  augment  and  promote;  and  any 
designs  against  the  same,  which  came  to  his  knowledge,  he 
would  resist  and  denounce: — to  the  King,  that  he  would 
thenceforward  utterly  forsake  all  clauses,  words,  sentences, 
grants  which  he  had  or  should  have  hereafter  from  the  Pope's 
Holiness  in  virtue  of  his  bishopric  that  in  any  wise  were 
or  might  be  prejudicial  to  his  Highness,  his  heirs,  succes- 
sors, dignity,  privilege,  or  estate  royal;  that  to  him  and  his 
he  would  be  faithful  and  true,  and  live  and  die  with  him 
against  all  people;  that  he  acknowledged  himself  to  hold 
his  bishopric  of  him  only,  and  accordingly  besdught  of  him 
the  restitution  of  the  temporalities  of  the  same.*  Now  to 
be  impaled  on  one  or  other  of  the  horns  of  such  an  alter- 
native as  this  was  a  cruel  situation  into  which  no  man  ought 
to  have  been  forced;  and  though  it  is  an  easy  thing  for  an 
indifferent  spectator  at  a  distance  to  philosophise  upon  the 
unseemly  writhings  of  the  victim,  yet  some  allowance  will 
be  made  for  him  by  every  pitiful-hearted  observer  if,  in  his 
struggles  to  get  off  the  hook,  he  should  chance  to  uncover 
his  nakedness.  The  question  indeed,  resolved  itself  into 
this;  were  there,  or  were  there  not,  to  be  bishops  in  England? 
for  if  none  would  take  the  oaths  who  could  not  acquiesce  in 
both  of  them  to  the  letter,  and  if  none  were  to  be  admitted  to 
consecration  who  refused  either  of  the  oaths,  the  order  of 
prelates  was  at  an  end.t 

*  See  Burnet,  Hist,  of  Ref.  vol.  i.  p.  123.  fol.  where  the  oaths  arc 
given  at  full, 
t  Cranrner,  when  examined  before  the   commissioners  at  Oxford* 


SEPARATION  FRO 31  ROME.  131 

On  the  30th  March,  1533,  Cranmer  was  consecrated 
by  the  Bishops  of  Lincohi,  Exeter,  and  St.  Asaph;  and  in 
the  May  following-  (^the  convocation  having  declared  the 
King's  marriage  with  Katharine  unlawful)  he  publicly  pro- 
nounced the  sentence  of  their  separation;  and  about  the  sanrie 
time  confirmed  by  another  judgment,  the  match  with  Ann 
Bullen.  Thus  was  he  now  fairly  embarked  in  the  same 
boat  with  the  King,  and  the  part  he  took  in  the  transactions 
of  these  days  was  faithfully  treasured  up  in  the  memory  of 
Mary,  and  served  at  length  (though  not  in  the  scriptural 
sense  of  the  expression)  to  heap  coals  of  fire  upon  his  head. 
But  however  important  such  measures  were  in  fact,  they 
were  doubly  so  in  principle.  The  Pope  had  joined  a  King 
and  Queen  together  as  lawful  man  and  wife;  his  right  to 
do  this  is  not  only  disputed,  but  denied;  and  the  church 
of  England,  assuming  an  attitude  of  independence,  rescinds 
his  decision,  and  sets  his  authority  at  nought.  This  could 
not  be  passed  over.  Rome  threatens  the  King  with  excom- 
munication; and  as  the  last  ounce  it  is  that  breaks  the  camel's 
back,  so  here  the  menace  proved  enough  to  try  the  question 
of  papal  claims  upon  England,  and  to  eflfect  the  rejection  of 
them  for  ever. 

The  grounds  of  such  a  decision  were  many  and  various;  in 
the  first  place,  St.  Peter  himself,  on  whose  transmitted  autho- 
rity the  popes  pretended  to  found  their  own,  was  not  at  all  su- 
perior to  the  other  apostles: — "  Thou  art  Peter,"  said  indeed 
our  Lord  to  him,  "  and  on  this  rock  will  I  build  my  church;" 
but  he  only  built  it  upon  him  as  he  built  it  upon  James  or 
John.  Of  the  church  of  Ephesus,  it  was  expressly  declared 
that  it  was  built  "  upon  the  foundation  of  the  apostles  and  pro- 
touching  the  supremacy,  urges  with  great  force  this  same  argument 
against  the  Queen  herself,  whose  oaths  to  the  state  and  to  the  pope 
being  so  repugnant. — "  She  must  needs  be  forsworn  to  the  one." — 
Fox,  vol.  iii.  p.  660. 


132  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

phets,  Jesus  Christ  himself  being  the  chief  corner-stone."* 
In  whatever  sense,  therefore,  Peter  might  be  called  the  rock, 
(if  indeed  to  Peter  the  expression  referred,  and  not  to 
Christ,)  James  or  John  might  be  called  so  too.  When  an 
apostle  was  to  be  appointed  in  the  room  of  Judas,  it  did  not 
fall  to  Peter's  province  especially  to  choose  him;  when  dea- 
cons were  instituted,  it  was  not  exclusively  by  Peter  that  it 
was  done;  the  bishop  of  the  first  and  principal  church  after 
our  Lord's  ascension  was  not  Peter  but  James;  and  by 
James  the  decree  touching  circumcision  was  issued.  St. 
Paul  had  no  scruple  in  rebuking  Peter  to  his  face  when  he 
dissembled,  or  in  asserting  of  himself  that  "he  was  not 
a  whit  behind  the  very  chiefest  apostles."!  But  fur- 
ther, even  had  St.  Peter  been  all  that  the  church  of  Rome 
pretended,  his  superiority  would  still  have  been  of  person, 
not  of  place,  and  could  not  attach  to  Rome  more  than  to 
Antioch;  nor  so  much,  if  Rome,  as  some  even  of  the  ear- 
liest interpreters  of  Scripture  affirmed,  was  Babylon.  More- 
over, whilst  the  commission  given  by  our  Lord  to  Peter, 
'*  Feed  my  sheep,"  (which  was  a  text  put  in  the  fore-front 
of  the  controversy  by  the  Romanists)  could  be  interpreted 
to  mean  the  whole  world  was  to  be  the  Pope's  diocese, 
there  was  nothing  which  Scripfure  might  not  be  made  to 
mean;  besides,  if  the  Pope  was  St.  Peter's  successor, 
wherein,  it  was  asked,  did  the  succession  consist?  What 
one  thing  had  St.  Peter  like  the  Pope,  or  the  Pope  like  St. 
Peter?  Did  St.  Peter  take  away  the  keys  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven;  hide  the  treasures  of  God's  word;  consign  souls 
to  purgatory,  or  release  them  from  it  at  his  pleasure  for 
silver  or  gold;  pray  in  an  unknown  tongue;  carry  about  the 
sacrament  with  lights  and  bells;  sell  jubilees,  graces,  palls, 

*  See  Jewel's  Defence  of  the  Apology,  p.  G34,  foL 
t  2  Cor.  xi.  5. 


THE  king's  supremacy.  133 

bulls,  pardons,  indulgences?  Did  he  call  himself  the  head 
of  the  church,  the  bishop  of  bishops,  and  usurp  dominion 
over  all  God's  creatures?  Did  he  exempt  himself  from  the 
power  of  civil  government;  maintain  wars;  set  princes  at 
variance;  or  sit  in  a  chair  with  a  purple  gown  and  regal 
sceptre  and  diadem  of  gold  and  precious  stones,  and  set  his 
feet  on  kings'  necks?  Did  St.  Peter,  it  was  asked  in  con- 
clusion, leave  these  affairs  and  others  like  them  in  charge 
to  his  successors  from  hand  to  hand? 
'  Nor,  in  transferring  the  supremacy  from  the  Pope  to  the 
King,  did  the  church  of  England  act  unadvisedly,  however 
it  was  objected  to  her  that  civil  princes  should  confine  them- 
selves to  civil  matters.  Certainly,  nothing  could  be  more 
inexpedient,  whether  for  the  good  government  of  the  coun- 
try, or  its  spiritual  improvement,  than  that  there  should  be 
in  it  two  sovereign  heads,  each  desirous  to  have  the  pre- 
eminence, and  a  struggle  be  thus  perpetuated  between  poli- 
tics and  religion;  such  a  mingling  of  hot  blood  with  sacrifice 
could  never  be  acceptable  to  a  God  of  order  and  peace;  and 
how  was  the  inconvenience  to  be  avoided  except  by  making 
one  and  the  same  person  in  all  causes,  ecclesiastical  as  well 
as  civil,  supreme?  Neither  was  this  a  new  thing  under  tlie 
sun:  God  had  of  old  time  commissioned  kings  to  execute 
many  holy  offices. — Isaiah  had  spoken  of  them  as  nursing 
fathers  of  the  church;* — Moses,  the  civil  magistrate,  had 
rebuked  Aaron  the  priest  for  a  breach  of  duty — Joshua  had 
set  many  things  in  order  which  pertained  to  God;  enjoin- 
ing circumcision,  commanding  sacrifices  to  be  made,  and 
the  blessings  and  curses  of  the  law  to  be  sounded  in  the 
ears  of  the  people — David  had  directed  and  superintended 
the  removal  of  the  ark  to  Jerusalem — Solomon  had  reared 
the  Temple,  addressed  his  subjects  afterwards  in  a  godly 

*  xlix.  23. 
12 


134  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

oration,  deposed  Abiathar  the  priest,  and  set  np  Zadok  in 
his  place — Josiah  liad  restored  and  reformed  the  worship 
of  his  time;  cleansed  the  Temple,  broken  the  brazen  ser- 
pent, now  become  an  object  of  idolatry,  and  despatched  his 
priest  to  inquire  of  the  prophetess  respecting  the  copy  of 
the  law  which  he  had  recently  discovered;*  and  whatever 
may  be  said  of  a  change  of  times  and  systems  since  these 
dynasties  passed  away,  still  tlie  principle  itself  is  not  af- 
fected by  such  change;  and  nothing  can  be  more  certain 
than  that  these  persons  were  temporal  and  not  spiritual 
governors  of  tlieir  nation,  and  yet  that  in  matters  ecclesias- 
tical they  were  autliorised  to  a  ('ertain  extent  to  interfere — 
we  say,  to  a  certain  extent;  for  neither  could  these  sove- 
reio-ns,  nor  can  any  sovereigns,  as  such,  excommunicate, 
or  bind,  or  loose,  or  perform,  one  of  the  priestly  functions; 
still  they  may  lawfully  see  that  others  duly  commissioned 
do  perform  them;  it  is  one  thing  to  exercise  the  office  of  a 
bishop,  and  another  to  provide  that  a  bishop  there  be,  and 
a  fit  one,  to  exe(;ute  it  for  himself.t 

Neither  does  it  seem  to  be  unmeet  that  they  who  are 
themselves  the  "  ministers  of  God,"  (as  St.  Paul  expressly 
calls  the  supreme  magistrates)  the  "  powers  ordained  of 
God,"  the  men  to  whom  "  every  soul,"  without  any  reser- 
vation of  ecclesiastics,  is  to  be  subject  "  because  they  are 
of  God,"  should  have  some  voice  in  the  approval  of  the 
servants  of  God's  church,  and  some  control  over  them; 
more  especially  when  it  is  remembered  that  it  is  the  duty 
of  a  king  to  rule  well,  and  that  it  would  be  difficult  for  him 
to  rule  at  all,  with  a  body  of  men  within  his  realm  and  out 
of  his  own  reach,  who  must  always  possess,  so  long  as  the 
concerns  of  a  world  beyond  the  grave  can  touch  mankind, 


*  2  Kings,  xxii. 

t  See  Jewel's  Defence  of  the  Apology,  p.  571. 


ALLIANCE  OF  CHURCH  AND  STATE.  135 

a  very  powerful  lever  in  their  hands,  which,  however 
honestly  it  may  be,  and  is  in  general  applied,  is  neverthe- 
less capable  of  misapplication,  as  the  history  of  every  na- 
tion can  testify,  and  none  more  than  our  own.*  And  with- 
out any  reference  to  extreme  cases,  to  the  danger,  for  in- 
stance, of  religious  meetings  becoming,  in  critical  seasons, 
schools  of  sedition,  and  of  the  divine  resolving  himself  into 
the  demagogue;  a  danger,  however,  by  no  means  chimeri- 
cal when  there  is  nothing  to  connect  the  system  of  religious 
instruction  with  the  office  of  the  civil  magistrate;  even  in 
ordinary  times  it  would  be  found,  and  it  has  been  found, 
that  the  spirit  of  the  independent  congregation  and  that  of 
the  government  under  which  it  exists,  but  to  which  it  owes 
nothing,  coincide  but  little — and  that  the  state  is  apt  to  feel 
its  energies  crippled  by  the  positive  opposition,  or  at  least 
the  non-co-operation  of  these,  its  members,  in  their  reli- 
gious capacity. 

It  may  be  added,  in  defence  of  the  consolidation  of  the 
supremacy,  both  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  in  the  king,  that 
the  Romanists  themselves  could  not  deny  that  the  early- 
councils  (the  decrees  of  which  are  recognised  by  the  church 
of  Rome  to  this  day)  were  summoned  by  the  magistrate, 
and  not  by  the  Bishop  of  Rome;  the  council  of  Nice;  for 
example,  by  Constantine,  "  who  called  together  a  synod 
(they  are  the  words  ofSozomen),  and  wrote  letters  to  those 
who  were  set  over  the  churches,  in  everyplace  to  attend  on 
a  certain  day — and  there  were  present  (he  adds)  at  this  as- 
sembly, from  the  apostolic  see,  Macarius  of  Jerusalem, 
Eustathius,  the  President  of  the  church  of  Antioch,  (who  is 
reported  by  Theodoret,  it  may  be  observed,  as  the  leader  of 
the  council,  and  the  orator  who  opened   it  by  an  address  to 

*  See  The  Icon  Basilike,  chap,  xvii.,  quoted  by  Warburton  in  his 
"  Alliance  between  Church  and  State." 


136  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  emperor,)  Alexander  of  Alexandria,  Biton  and  Bicenti- 
us,  presbyters  of  the  church  of  Rome,  Julius  the  bishop 
being  absent,  and  in  all,  of  bishops  about  three  hundred  and 
twenty,  and  of  presbyters  and  deacons  who  attended  them 
no  small  number."* 

Thus  do  we  find  Scripture  lending  its  sanction  to  such 
an  alliance  between  church  and  state,  as  the  identification 
of  the  king  with  the  supreme  head  of  the  church  implies — 
early  ecclesiastical  history  declaratory  of  the  authority  by 
which  councils  were  at  first  summoned,  giving  it  the  appro- 
bation of  primitive  usage— and  the  necessity  of  one  mind 
actuating  every  member  of  the  body  politic,  both  civil  and 
sacred,  dictating  its  expediency. 

*  See  Sozomen,  Hist  Eccles.  lib.  i.  c.  xvii.  Euseb.  de  Vit.  Constan- 
tin.  iii.  c.  vii.    Tlieodoret,  Hist.  Eccles.  i.  c.  vii. 


137 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

DISSOLUTION  OF  THE  ABBEYS. CHURCH  PROPERTY. 

IMMEDIATE  CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  DISSOLUTION. 

Henry  had  by  this  time  fairly  passed  the  Rubicon.  After 
a  long  pause  and  much  anxiety  for  the  event,  he  had  ven- 
tured upon  an  act  which  was  a  declaration  of  war  against  ' 
the  Pope,  and  he  must  now  on.  The  strength  of  the  Pon- 
tiff lay,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  monastic  orders,  and  in  the 
Mendicants  above  all.  The  secular  clergy  were  better  sub- 
jects, and  acknowledged  a  less  divided  allegiance.  But  the 
monks  were  so  powerful  a  body  in  England  that  the  mon- 
arch, even  in  times  when  he  wore  far  from  the  semblance 
of  a  kingly  crown,  could  scarcely  balance  them.  Grievan- 
ces are  alleged  against  them  without  end  in  the  "  Supplica- 
tion of  Beggars;"  "  But  what  remedy?"  says  the  author  of 
this  singular  address  to  the  King.  ''  Make  laws  against  them? 
I  am  in  doubt  whether  ye  be  able.  Are  they  not  stronger  in 
your  own  parliament-house  than  yourself?  What  a  number 
of  bishops,  abbots,  and  priors  are  lords  of  your  parliament!* 
Are  not  all  the  learned  men  of  your  realm  in  fee  with  them, 
to  speak  in  your  parliament-house  for  them  against  your 
crown,  dignity,  and  commonwealth  of  your  realm,  a  lew 
of  your  own  learned  council  only  expected?    What  law  can 

*  In  the  time  of  Henry  III.,  sixty-four  abbots  and  thirty-six  priors 
were  called  to  parliament;  but  Edward  III.  reduced  them  to -twenty- 
five  abbots  and  two  priors:  two  abbots  were  added  afterwards;  so  that 
there  were  in  all  twenty. nine  who  enjoyed  this  honor  till  the  dissolu- 
tion. 

12* 


138  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

be  made  against  them  that  will  be  available?"*  When,  there- 
fore, the  time  came  for  all  men  to  choose  their  side,  and  it  was 
clearly  seen  that  this  formidable  body  of  regulars  would  cleave 
to  the  Pope  to  a  man,  the  question  was,  whether  the  King 
should  put  down  the  monks,  or  the  monks  the  King.  Hen- 
ry had  no  alternative  but  to  try  a  fall  with  them,  and  accor- 
dingly, having  been  slow  (considering  his  temperament)  to 
get  into  the  quarrel,  he  still  acted  as  Lord  Bacon  would  have 
advised,  and  being  in  it  bore  himself  bravely.  Some  encou- 
ragement in  his  hazardous  undertaking  he  might  possibly 
derive  from  the  new  channel  in  which  public  benefactions 
began  now  to  run,  and  the  feeling  it  indicated  towards  the 
religious  houses;  for  whilst  no  abbey  or  priory  had  been 
founded  for  thirty  years  and  upwards,  the  endowment  of 
schools  and  colleges  was  becoming  more  and  more  frequent.f 
Accordingly,  he  began  with  the  lesser  monasteries,  of  which 
the  income  did  not  exceed  200/.,  or  the  inmates  twelve  in 
number.  There  were  many  reasons  for  making  them  his 
first  victims.  They  were  the  houses  of  the  the  friars,  the 
most  faithful  of  all  the  Pope's  servants,  and  the  earliest  to 
lift  up  their  voice  against  the  King's  supremacy  whilst  the 
question  of  the  divorce  was  in  progress.  The  friars  did  not 
stay  at  home  like  the  easy  and  well-conditioned  monks,  but 
had  to  forage  for  a  living.  "  Go  not  from  house  to  house," 
though  a  text  uttered,  as  it  might  seem,  with  almost  a  pro- 
phetic reference  to  them,  they  found  it  convenient  to  over- 
look. Whatever  opinions,  therefore,  they  entertained,  they 
had  the  power  of  putting  in  extensive  circulation;  now  that 
they  were  disaffected,  this  facility  became  doubly  dangerous. 
Then  they  were  the  most  vulnerable  of  the  orders;  their  cor- 

*  Fox's  Acts  and  Mon.  ii.  282. 

t  Knight's  Life  of  Dean  Colet,  p.  6L 


SUPPRESSION  OF  MONASTERIES.  139 

ruptions  were  the  grossest.  Their  vagrant  habits  threw 
them  amongst  temptations,  whilst  they  at  the  same  time 
withdrew  them  from  wholesome  restraints.  Abroad  they 
were  notorious  for  intrigues  in  the  hospitable  families  of  the 
peasants  and  artisans  who  received  ihem;  and  at  home  they 
had  a  treasury  of  lies,  very  profitable  to  themselves  whilst 
their  credit  was  good,  but  more  profitable  to  their  enemies 
when  the  fictitious  nature  of  the  capital  with  which  they 
traded  was  exposed.  The  Rood  of  Grace,  which  would 
hang  its  lip  when  silver  was  offered  to  it,  and  shake  its 
beard  merrily  when  the  offering  was  of  gold,  was  for  a  time 
an  exchequer;  but  when  the  profane  hand  of  a  Thomas 
Cromwell  had  once  opened  the  figure  at  Paul's  Cross,  and 
displayed  to  the  good  citizens  of  London  the  wires  by  which 
it  had  been  worked,  indignation  took  the  place  of  credulity, 
and  the  craftsmen,  to  whom  it  had  brought  no  small  gain, 
were  justly  scandalised.  Moreover,  the  destruction  of  these 
lesser  houses  did  not  touch  in  a  very  tender  place  the  pow- 
erful and  privileged  classes  of  society.  Younger  brothers 
were  provided  for  in  the  wealthy  abbey,  but  not  in  the  friar's 
hostel.  It  was  a  war  upon  the  weak  (so  far  as  property 
was  concerned,)  and  at  a  time  when  commerce  and  manu- 
factures had  not  taught  the  weak  but  the  many  their  value 
and  their  strength;  and  therefore  it  was  a  step  attended  with 
less  danger.  Lastly,  it  was  a  measure  that  served  very  well 
as  a  feeler  for  one  still  greater  which  was  behind,  but  which 
was  as  yet  studiously  disavowed,  the  suppression  of  all 
the  monasteries  and  convents  great  and  small;  it  was  the 
bristle   which  made   a  way  for  the  thread. 

Thus  the  year  1536,  saw  the  downfall  of  376  smaller  ab- 
beys, and  the  transfer  of  the  buildings  themselves,  and  of  the 
estates  attached  thereto,  to  the  King.  Here,  Henry  appears 
for  a  little  while  to  have  paused,  partly,  perhaps,  waiting  to 
see  the  effect  of  his  first  blow,  and  partly  engaged  by  domes- 


140  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

tic  matters  and  the  judicial  destruction  of  Ann;  but  he  was 
now  too  deeply  embarked  in  the  work  of  spoliation  to  stop 
long.  The  greater  monasteries  had  taken  the  alarm,  many 
of  them  had  already  divested  themselves  of  whatever  they 
could  detach  and  turn  into  money;  fines  were  passed  to  the 
detriment  of  the  rent-roll,  and  furniture  and  plate  sold  to 
the  dismantling  of  the  house;  so  that  upon  the  whole,  the 
personal  property  of  these  greater  houses  was  not  found  to 
be  near  so  rich  a  booty  as  that  of  the  less,  on  which  the 
storm  had  burst  unawares,  iiesides,  what  had  been  as  yet 
done  was  enough  to  irritate,  but  not  enough  to  disarm  the 
regulars;  Henry  had  made  them  implacable  without  making 
them  impotent;  and  a  rebellion  which  they  were  understood 
secretly  to  have  fomented  in  various  parts  of  England,  and 
especially  in  the  north  (the  quarter  whence  some  of  the 
most  serious  of  the  English  rebellions  have  issued,)  was 
sufficient  to  attest  at  once  their  si)irit  and  their  strength. 
Once  more,  therefore,  the  visiters  were  put  in  motion. 
Their  commission  was  made  out  to  examine  and  report 
the  state  of  the  religious  societies  yet  subsisting;  and  as 
the  inquiry  embraced  the  purity,  the  sincerity,  and  what  was 
more  questionable  still,  the  loyalty  of  the  parties,  a  verdict  of 
guilty,  as  might  be  anticipated,  was  soon  returned.  In 
many  cases,  indeed,  the  inquisitors  were  spared  their  in- 
vestigation, and  some  parties  feeling  heir  a])proacliing  con- 
demnation to  be  just,  and  more  feeling  it  to  be  inevitable, 
determined  to  take  their  sea  of  troubles  at  half-tide  and 
make  at  once  a  confession  and  a  surrender.  To  induce, this, 
however,  much  machinery  was  set  to  work  by  the  commis 
sioners  themselves;  for  it  was  with  a  heavy  heart,  and  a 
strong  sense  of  the  injustice  of  the  demand,  that  the  honest 
head  of  a  religious  house  resigned  that,  which  "  was 
not  his  to  geve,"  (as  the  prior  of  Henton  wrote  to  his 
brother,  reflecting  herein  a  very  general  feelmg,)  "  being 


EVILS  AND  BENEFITS  OF  MONASTERIES.  141 

dedicate  to  Allmyghtye  Gode  for  service  to  be  done  to  hys 
honoure  continuallye,  with  other  many  goode  deeds  off 
daylye  charite  to  christen  neybors."*  Still  some  resignations 
w^ere  obtained  by  promises  of  pensions;  some,  again,  by 
threats  of  exposure,  real,  or  pretended.  If  a  superior 
was  after  all  refractory,  he  was  put  out  of  the  way  by  force; 
and  some  disorderly  substitute  having  been  previously  pro- 
vided by  the  visiter,  the  latter  was  formally  ejected,  and  thus 
appearances  were  saved.t  Nor,  probably,  were  there  want- 
ing amongst  the  young  and  adventurous,  those  who  were 
glad  to  be  released  from  retreats  which,  like  the  Happy 
Valley,  were  too  free  from  pain  to  be  pleasurable;  and  who 
had  found  that  there  was  but  small  satisfaction  in  the  en- 
joyment "of  that  fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue,  that  shrunk 
from  the  race  when  the  prize  was  to  be  won  not  without 
dust  and  heat."J 

Amidst  the  strife  of  tongues,  which  those  tempestuous 
times  called  forth,  it  is  almost  hopeless  to  come  at  the  exact 
truth.  On  the  one  hand,  the  visiters  are  charged  with  in- 
ordinate rapacity,  with  private  embezzlement  of  the  vast  pro- 
perty lying  at  their  mercy,  and  even  with  abusing  the  oppor- 
tunities which  their  commission  gave  them,  and  corrupting 
the  nuns.  They,  on  the  other  hand,  retaliated  bypresenting  to 
the  eyes  of  the  people  a  most  revolting  picture  of  the  interior 
of  these  whited  sepulchres  (for  such  they  were  described  to 
be)  fair  on  the  outside,  but  within  full  of  dead'men's  bones,  and 
all  uncleanness,  of  spurious  relics  and  sensual  sins,  and  the 
foulness  of  the  picture  helped  to  relieve  the  King  from  the 
odium  of  destroying  it. 

*  See  Ellis's  Original  Letters,  vol.  ii.  pp.  71.  77.  vol.  ii.  p.  130, 
Second  Series. 

t  See  an  Account  of  the  Ancient  and  Present  State  of  Shrewsbury 
12mo.  p.  107. 

t  Milton. 


142  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Yet,  bad  as  the  monasteries  were  reported  to  be,  and  bad 
in  many  instances  they  probably  were,  (for  the  system  was 
in  some  respects  radically  pernicious,)  the  event  proved 
that  they  had  their  redeeming  qualitiies  too;  and  as  we  know 
not,  says  the  proverb,  what  the  well  is  worth  till  it  is  dry, 
so  was  it  found  after  the  dissolution,  that,  with  all  their 
faults,  the  monasteries  had  been  the  refuge  for  the  destitute 
who  were  now  driven  to  frightful  extremities  throughout  the 
country,  the  effect  of  the  suppression  being  with  respect 
to  them  the  same  as  would  now  follow  from  the  sudden 
abolition  of  the  poor  laws;  they  had  been  the  alms-houses, 
where  the  aged  dependants  of  more  opulent  families,  the 
decrepid  servant,  the  decayed  artificer,  retired  as  to  a  home 
neither  uncomfortable  nor  humiliating;  that  they  had  been 
the  county  infirmaries  and  dispensaries,  a  knowledge  of 
medicine  and  of  the  virtues  of  herbs  being  a  department  of 
monkish  learning  (as  passages  in  the  old  dramatic  writers 
sometimes  indicate^)  and  a  hospital,  and,  perhaps,  a  labora- 
tory, bein^  component  parts  of  a  monkish  establishment; 
that  they  liad  been  foundling  asylums,  relieving  the  state  of 
many  orphan  and  outcast  children,  and  ministering  to  their 
necessities,  God's  ravens  in  the  wilderness,  (neither  so  black 
as  they  had  been  represented,)  bread  and  fiesh  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  bread  and  flesh  in  the  evening;-'^  that  they  had  been 
inns  for  the  way-faring  man,  who  heard  from  afar  the  sound  of 
he  vesper  bell,  at  once  inviting  him  to  repose  and  devotion, 
and  who  might  sing  his  matins  with  the  morning  star,  and  go 
on  his  way  rejoicing;  that  they  filled  up  the  gap  in  which  the 
public  libraries  have  since  stood,  and  if  their  inmates  were  not 
very  desirous  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  themselves, 
they  had  at  least  the  merit  of  cherishing  and  preserving  it 
alive  for  others.     Thus  do  we  find  in  the  monastic  system 

*  See  Sir  H.  Spelman's  Histgry  and  Fate  of  Sacrilege,  p.  229. 


IMPROPRIATORS.  143 

a  provision  made  for  many  of  those  wants  of  society  which 
public  institutions  are  now  designed  to  meet  perhaps  more 
effectually;  and  it  is  not  uninteresting  to  remark,  how  the 
great  wants  of  nature  still  make  themselves  known,  what- 
ever convulsions  a  nation  may  undergo,  and  still  conduct  i^ 
to  something  like  the  same  course  as  before,  though  not, 
perhaps,  under  the  same  name;  and  when  the  flood  subsides 
that  has  covered  the  earth,  to  see  how  Ararat  rears  his  head 
as  he  did  at  the  first,  and  Pihon  returns  into  his  wonted 
channel  to  water  the  garden.  Well  would  it  be  for  the 
peace  of  the  world  if  this  consideration  had  its  due  influence 
that  should  paralyse,  bu  tthat  should  moderate;^if  men  would 
not  subject  society  to  needless  confusion,  whilst  tliey  at- 
tempt to  expel  nature  by  a  fork,  sure  as  it  is  to  recoil  and 
recover  itself;  if  they  w^ould  spare  themselves  and  others 
the  inconvenience  of  a  struggle,  where  they  fight  as  one 
beating  the  air. 

The  convulsion  felt  throughout  the  country  on  this 
memorable  occasion  was  probably  more  violent  than  any 
which  it  has  experienced  either  before  or  since.  The  joints 
of  society  were  thoroughly  loosed;  a  vast  proportion  of 
the  population  was  turned  adrift  upon  the  wide  world,  their 
employment  gone,  their  relief  gone  too.  Seventy-two 
thousand  persons  are  said  to  have  perished  by  the  hand 
of  the  executioner  in  the  reign  of  King  Henry,  some 
made  desperate  by  want,  and  some  made  bold  by  the 
lawless  license  of  the  times.  Cromwell,  who  was  the 
the  King's  political  adviser  throughout  this  great  measure, 
felt  the  state  rocking  under  him,  and  suggested  the  sale  of 
the  abbey  lands  and  tithes  at  easy  prices  to  the  nobles  and 
gentry,  that  by  this  means  tlie  leading  persons  in  every 
county  might  be  pledged  to  support  the  new  order  of  things, 
and  be  tied  by  the  tooth.  Thus  popish  lands,  as  it  was 
said,  made  protestaat  landlords,  and  thus  the  lay  impropria- 


144  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

tor,  a  character  hitherto  almost  or  altogether  unknown,  took 
his  beginning.  How  far  the  country  was  a  gainer  by  the 
exchange  of  ecclesiastical  for  other  landlords  may  be  ques- 
tioned. The  monks  were  accused  of  covetousness;  yet  it 
is  singular  that  no  legal  provision  for  the  poor  was  wanted 
so  long  as  the  property  was  in  their  hands,  and  that  it  had 
scarcely  left  their  hands  before  it  was  found  necessary  to 
make  such  a  provision;  the  statute  of  the  5tli  of  Elizabeth 
being  the  first  direct  one  of  the  kind.*  The  monks  were 
said  to  deal  very  thriftily  with  the  incumbents  of  their  liv- 
ings; yet  it  is  remarkable  that  no  law  for  preventing  the 
dilapidation  of  parsonages  was  called  for  till  the  13th  of  the 
same  reign.  The  monks  lavished  decorations  upon  their 
own  chapels  to  the  comparative  neglect  of  their  country 
churches,  but  they  never  pulled  down  all  the  houses  on  an 
estate  in  order  that  there  might  be  no  congregation,  and  then 
converted  the  church  into  a  straw  barn,  because  there  was 
none.t  The  monks  gave  a  miserable  stipend  to  their  vicar, 
"but  now,"  says  one  Henry  Brinklow,  in  a  curious  address 
to  the  members  of  both  houses  shortly  after  the  dissohition, 
**  there  is  no  vicar  at  all,  but  the  farmer  is  vicar  and  parson 
altogether;  and  only  an  old  castaway  monk  or  friar,  which 
can  scarcely  say  his  matins,  is  hired  for  twenty  or  thirty 
shillings,  meat  and  drink;  yea,  in  some  places,  for  meat 
and  drink  alone,  without  any  wages.  I  know,"  he  conti- 
nues, "  and  not  I  alone,  but  twenty  thousand  men  know, 
more  than  five  hundred  vicarages  and  parsonages  thus  well 
and  gospelly  served  after  the  new  gospel  of  England."! 
And  so  crying  was  this  evil,  for  even  great  parishes  and 
market  towns  were  utterly  destitute  of  the  word  of  God,§ 

*  Kennett  on  Impropriations,  p.  165. 

t  Strype,  Cranmer,  p.  412. 

X  Kennett  on  Impropriations,  p.  131. 

§  Dedicat.  of  Latimer's  Sermons,  vol.  ii.  p.  ix. 


LAY  IMPROPRIATORS.  145 

that  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  ordain  the  lowest  me- 
chanics to  these  worthless  benefices,  no  man  of  education 
being  willing  to  accept  such  a  pittance,  for  the  endowments, 
it  must  be  observed,  had  been  seized  precisely  at  the  time 
when  the  wages  of  superstition  in  the  shape  of  fees,  which 
before  the  Reformation  supplied  no  small  part  of  the  vicar's 
income,  were  extinguished  also,  and  holy  toys  were  no  long- 
er vendible.  The  cause  of  religion,  however,  being  found 
at  length  to  suffer  seriously,  both  from  the  ignorance  and 
the  lives  of  these  preachers.  Archbishop  Parker  enjoined 
his  sufTragrans  to  refuse  such  candidates  holy  orders,  and 
then  pluralities  became  a  bad,  but  it  was  the  best,  or  rather 
the  only,  alternative.^  Queen  Anne  lamented  and  endeav- 
oured to  remedy  the  evil.  She  discharged  all  livings  under 
fifty  pounds  a  "year,  according  to  an  improved  valuation 
which  she  directed  the  bishops  and  others  to  make,  from 
the  payment  of  tenths  to  the  exchequer,  a  tax  which  had 
caused  many  benefices  to  remain  altogether  without  incum- 
bents; and  by  another  and  still  more  munificent  act,  she 
made  over  the  first-fruits  and  tenths  of  such  as  were  undis- 
charged, to  the  augmentation  of  small  livings;  a  fund  which, 
it  may  be  here  observed,  had  been  seized  by  Henry,  the 
successor  of  the  pope  in  his  fees  as  he  was  in  his  suprema- 
cy; hereby  doing  what  in  her  lay  to  heal  the  laceration 
which  the  system  of  lay-impropriations  had  inflicted  on  the 
church,  and  purchasing  for  herself,  beyond  most  other  sove- 
reigns that  have  sat  upon  the  throne  of  England,  a  good  re- 
nown. But,  in  general,  this  ill-gotten  and  ill-applied  wealth 
served  only  to  verify  the  adage,  "  that  the  devil's  corn  goes 
all  to  bran."  The  receivers  of  the  plunder  rarely  prospered; 
and  it  is  observed  by  Sir.  H.  Spelman,  about  the  year  1616, 
that  on  comparing  the  mansion-houses  of  twenty-four  fami- 

*  Kennett,  pp.  158.  184. 
13 


146  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

lies  of  gentlemen  in  Norfolk,  with  as  many  monasteries,  all 
standing  together  at  the  dissolution,  and  all  lying  within 
a  ring  of  twelve  miles  the  semi-diameter,  he  found  the  former 
still  possessed  by  the  lineal  descendants  of  their  original 
occupants  in  every  instance;  whilst  the  latter,  with  two  excep- 
tions only,  had  flung  out  their  owners  again  and  again  some 
six  times  over,  none  less  than  three,  through  sale,  through  de- 
fault of  issue,  and  very  often  through  great  and  grievous  dis- 
asters.* Nor  was  this  the  opinion  of  an  individual,  or  of  a 
visionary;  on  the  contrary,  it  was  very  generally  entertained 
by  men  the  most  sober-minded.  Archbishop  Whitgift,  in 
his  appeal  to  Queen  Elizabeth  against  the  sacrilegious  de- 
signs of  the  Earl  of  Leicester  and  others,  challenges  this  as  a 
truth  "  already  become  visible  in  many  families,  that  church 
land,  added  to  an  ancient  and  just  inheritance,  hath  proved 
like  a  moth  fretting  a  garment,  and  secretly  consumed  both."t 
Lord  Burleigh,  whose  bias  was  rather  that  of  the  Puri- 
tan than  of  the  Roman  Catholic,  cautioned  Thomas,  his 
first-born,  not  to  build  on  an  impropriation,  as  fearing  the 
foundation  might  hereafter  fail. J  "  I  charge  you,"  was  one 
of  the  three  injunctions  laid  upon  his  son  by  Lord  Strafford 
when  under  sentence  of  death,  "  touching  church  property, 
never  to  meddle  with  it;  for  the  curse  of  God  will  follow  all 
them  that  meddle  with  such  a  thing  that  tends  to  the  de- 
struction of  the  most  apostolical  church  upon  earth. "§  And 
even  Selden  (no  violent  advocate  of  ecclesiastical  dues)  cen- 
sures the  alienation  of  tithes.  "  And  let  them  remember," 
he  writes,  "  who  says,  '  It  is  a  destruction  for  a  man  to  de- 
vour what  is  consecrated.'  "1|  Inde-ed,  during  the  latter  half 

*  History  and  Fate  of  Sacrilege,  p.  243. 

+  Walton's  Life  of  Hooker.     Eccl.  Biog.  vol.  iv.  p.  236. 

t  Fuller's  Holy  and  Prof.  State,  p.  239. 

§  Kcuiictt's  Inipropr.  p.  438. 

11  Id.  184.     Prov.  XX.  25. 


EFFECTS  OF  LAY  IMPROPRIATIONS.  147 

of  the  seventeenth  century — whether  from  compunction — 
whether  from  the  attention  of  the  public  having  been  direct- 
ed to  the  subject  by  Archbishop  Laud,  and  by  popular  trea- 
tises which  made  their  appearance  about  that  time — whether 
from  the  experience  and  notoriety  of  the  evil,  and  the  conse- 
quent shame  it  drew  upon  its  abettors,  or  from  whatever 
other  cause — many  impropriations  were  voluntarily  relin- 
quished, and  a  very  considerable  number  of  vicarages  were 
more  or  less  augmented.*  Still  there  is  no  abuse  out  of 
which  Providence  cannot  extract  some  good.  This  act  of 
desecration  (as  it  was  considered)  proved  the  safety,  per- 
haps, of  the  yet  tottering  Protestant  cause,  under  the  reign 
of  Queen  Mary;  for  the  great  proprietors  had  violent  scru- 
ples against  returning  to  a  form  of  faith  which  might  entail 
upon  them  the  surrender  of  their  lands.  And  though  it  is 
probable  that  the  religious  establishment  of  this  country,  if 
it  had  stood  at  all,  would  have  stood  upon  firmer  ground  at 
this  moment,  had  the  Reformation  been  completed  (for  it 
was  left  sadly  imperfect),  by  the  revision  instead  of  the  ex- 
cessive alienation  of  the  revenues  of  the  church;  yet,  as  af- 
fairs turned  out,  that  very  spoliation,  perhaps,  sustained  the 
Church  of  England  a  second  time,  when  the  Puritan  lay 
impropriators  threw  themselves  in  the  way  (whether  con- 
sistently or  not)  of  the  abolition  of  tithes;t  and  more  unlike- 
ly things  have  happened  than  that  it  should  do  the  country 
the  like  good  office  again;  for  it  would  require  a  man  of 
more  intrepidity  than  even  the  disingenuous  Neal  (who 
walks  over  this  incident  more  delicately  than  is  his  custom 
where  there  is  room  for  a  fling  at  the  church)  to  draw  a  dis- 
tinction between  the  lay  and  ecclesiastical  tithe-holder,  in  fa- 
vour cf  the  former;  and  to  maintain  that  the  right  of  the  one 

*  Spelman,  p.  297. 

t  Neal,  History  of  the  Puritans,  vol.  iv.  p.  55. 


149  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

is  inviolable,  because  he  does  not  observe  the  conditions 
upon  which  it  was  originally  founded;  whilst  that  of  the 
other  is  nugatory,  because  he  does.  Certain  it  is,  that  the 
people  were  at  first  very  reluctant  to  transfer  the  payment 
of  tithes  (which  they  had  ever  regarded,  and  which  the  law 
had  ever  taught  them  to  regard,  as  inseparably  connected 
with  religious  services,)  to  laymen;*  and  however  it  may 
be  the  fashion  of  our  own  times  to  spare  the  impropriator, 
and  assail  the  clergymen,  nothing  is  more  true,  than  that  it 
was  not  so  from  the  beginning;  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  it 
was  then  thought  no  less  an  anomaly  to  pay  tenths  to  the 
landlord,  than  it  would  now  be  thought  so  to  pay  fees  for 
burials  and  baptisms  to  the  squire.  Ikit  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  owing  to  that  entire  self- 
security  from  which  she  did  not  rouse  herself  till  the  Philis- 
tines were  upon  her,  had  in  some  measure  to  thank  herself 
for  the  irreverence  with  which  ecclesiastieal  property  was 
now  treated.  Not  twelve  years  before  the  great  overthrow 
of  the  monasteries,  the  pope  himself  granted  Wolsey  a  bull 
for  the  dissolution  of  several  religious  houses,!  and  the  ap- 
plication of  the  funds  to  the  erection  and  endowment  of  his 
colleges  at  Oxford  and  Ipswich;  and,  indeed,  generally, .by 
the  diversion  of  estates  from  one  ecclesiastical  use  to  another, 
a  process  perpetually  going  on,  often  effected  rather  for  in- 
dividual advantage  than  for  the  public  good,  and  often  under 
circumstances  of  collusion  and  contrivance  discreditable  to 
all  the  parties  concerned,  a  feeling  of  respect  for  the  posses- 
sions of  the  church  as  exclusive  and  inalienable  was  weak- 
ened. The  tendency  of  such  a  traffic  (however  confined  to  a 
privileged  order)  was  to  make  the  article  itself  looked  upon 
in  the  light  of  merchandise,  and  to  invite  tov/ards  it  the  itch- 

*  Kennett,  p,  126. 

t  Strype  makes  the  number  20;  Collier,  40.      Collier,  ii.  19. 


DEPRESSION  OF  THE  CLERGY.  149 

ing  palms  of  the  profane.  And  even,  now  amongst  other 
advantages  not,  to  be  sure,  unalloyed,  which  the  law  against 
simony  in  some  degree  secures — such  as  the  less  frequent 
purchase  of  livings  at  high  prices,  for  which  interest  of  mon- 
ey would  be  sought  by  an  exaction  of  dues  to  the  uttermost 
farthing,  to  the  sure  destruction  of  the  pastoral  character — 
such  as  the  better  chance  hereby  offered  to  meritorious  men 
without  influence,  of  finding  a  patron  when  the  temptation 
he  would  be  otherwise  under  to  sell  rather  than  give,  is  part- 
ly taken  out  of  his  way; — besides  these  advantages  there  is 
another,  and  not  the  least,  in  the  skreen  which  it  interposes 
between  the  church,  and  the  market,  and  the  total  confusion 
which  it  prevents  between  the  things  of  men  and  the  things 
of  God. 

Henry  proved  himself  an  apt  scholar  in  the  lessons  which 
the  incautious,  not  to  say  unlawful,  practice  of  the  church 
of  Rome  taught  him.  And  so  successfully  had  he  overcome 
all  primitive  notions  of  the  honour  due  to  sacred  things, 
that  even  before  the  dissolution,  he  seems  to  have  converted 
many  monasteries  into  sta^bles;  a  scandal  of  which  honest 
Latimer  did  not  fail  to  remind  him  publicly;  conceiving  it 
a  monstrous  thing;  that  "  abbeys,  which  were  ordained  for 
the  comfort  of  the  poor,"  should  be  kept  for  the  king's 
horses;  nor  convinced  of  the  contrary  by  the  nobleman 
(whv  seems  to  have  been  ripe  to  become  an  impropriator, 
as  vei)  likely  he  did)  who  said  to  him,  "  What  hast  thou 
to  do  with  the  khig's  horses? — horses  be  the  maintenance 
and  part  of  a  king's  honour  and  also  of  his  realm;  where- 
fore, in  speaking  against  them,  ye  are  speaking  against  the 
king's  honour."* 

Cranmer  was  not  (as  may  be  well  believed)  an  uncon- 
cerned spectator  of  this  great  revolution  in  the  possessions 

*  Latimer's  Sermons,  v.  i.  p.  87. 
13* 


150  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

of  the  church;  but  though  he  agreed  with  Cromwell  in  the 
desire  of  the  dissolution,  he  differed  from  him  with  regard 
to  the  application  of  the  proceeds.  Indeed,  the  views  they 
respectively  look  of  the  nature  of  ecclesiastical  property  do 
not  appear  to  have  coincided.  The  one  was  rather  acting 
in  a  political,  the  other  in  a  religious  spirit.  Cromwell  was 
concerned  to  right  the  monarchy,  Cranmer  to  save  a  church. 
The  former  was  for  the  suppression  of  the  religious  houses, 
because  the  supremacy  of  the  crown  could  not  be  otherwise 
secured;  the  latter  had  this  for  his  object  too,  but  still  more 
the  annihilation  of  the  abuses  of  purgatory,  masses  for  the 
dead,  saint-worship,  and  pilgrimage,  of  all  which  the  abbeys 
were  the  incorrigible  patrons.  So  far,  therefore,  they  went 
hand  in  hand.  But  in  the  disposal  of  the  vast  fund  which 
accrued  from  the  confiscation  of  the  church  estates,  Cran- 
mer did  not,  like  Cromwell  and  the  parliament,  regard  it 
as  a  matter  for  the  king  to  take  his  pastime  with,  according 
to  his  own  mere  will  and  motion.*  Nor  would  he  dissi- 
pate, nor  did  he  think  it  lawful  to  divert  from  its  original 
destination,  and  that  the  promotion  of  God's  glory,  so  am- 
ple a  revenue,  and  make  it  over  at  once,  and  for  secular 
purposes  only,  to  the  crown.  He,  therefore,  was  for  con- 
sidering it  as  still  a  sacred  treasure,  to  be  applied  to  sacred 
ends;  and  out  of  the  old  and  corrupted  monasteries  he  was 
desirous  to  see  arise  new  and  better  foundations:  houses  at- 
tached to  all  the  cathedrals,  to  serve  as  nurseries  for  the 
clergy  of  the  diocese  in  religion  and  learning;  an  addition 


*  See  some  curious  traits  of  Cromwell's  real  character  collected 
from  bis  own  memoranda,  and  other  authentic  sources,  in  Ellis's  Ori- 
ginal  Letters,  vol.  ii.  p.  116,  second  scries,  and  again,  p.  162:  a  list  of 
the  grants  of  lands  made  to  him  by  Henry,  is  given  p.  171.  See  also 
Hallam's  Constitutional  History,  8vo.  i.  96.;  and  Sir  James  Mackin- 
tosh's  History  of  England,  ii.  228, 


LATIMER  INTERCEDES  FOR  MALVERN.  151 

made  to  the  incomes  of  the  inferior  class;*  and  the  number 
of  sees  increased,  with  a  corresponding  diminution  in  their 
extent,  that  the  bishop  might  be  in  deed  as  well  as  in  name 
the  overseers.t  To  these  wise  and  good  propositions  Lati- 
mer added  another,  no  less  commendable,  that  a  few  of  the 
greater  abbeys  should  be  left  for  pious  and  charitable  uses. 
For  the  priory  of  Malvern,  above  all,  he  intercedes  with 
great  earnestness,  not  that  it  "  should  stand  in  monkery, 
but  so  as  to  be  converted  to  preaching,  study,  and  prayer;" 
and  then  he  adds,  "  Alas!  my  good  Lord"  (it  is  to  Crom- 
well that  he  makes  his  fruitless  appeal),  "  shall  we  not  see 
two  or  three  in  every  shire  changed  to  such  remedy?"^  In 
suggesting  these  and  similar  measures,  the  reformers  felt 
that  they  had  right  on  their  side.  Whether  the  property  of 
the  church  had  not  accumulated  to  an  amount  inconvenient 
to  the  state,  as  unduly  narrowing  the  limits  within  which 
other  professions  were  left  to  walk,  may  be  doubted;  and 
therefore  Cranmer,  with  his  usual  moderation,  consented 
that  the  king  should  resume  the  lands  which  the  piety  (or, 
as  it  would  be  now  said,  the  superstition,)  of  his  ancestors 
had  granted  to  ecclesiastics,  and  dispose  of  them  as  seemed 
best  to  him.  But  they  felt  also,  that  church  endowments 
in  general,  and  tithes  in  particular,  were  goods  set  apart  for 
the  promotion  of  religion  from  time  immemorial,  the  pos- 
sessor of  a  manor  erecting  upon  it  a  church,  and  charging 
it  for  ever  with  the  maintenance  of  a  man  whose  business 
it  should  be  to  teach  the  people  upon  it  the  law  of  God, 
and  thus  acknowledging  on  his  own  part  his  tenure  to  be 
under  God,  "  the  land  His,  and  himself  a  stranger  and  so- 
journer with  Him."§  This  was  the  origin  of  parishes;  the 
parish  co-extensive  (as  it  is  still  almost  always  found)  with 

*.  Burnet,  ii.  45.  46.  t  Id.  i.  183,  190. 

t  Id.  i.  227.  §  Levit.  xxv.  23. 


152  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  manor,  so  that  even  where  the  latter  chances  to  have  a 
part  distant  and  detached,  the  parish,  however  inconve- 
nient it  may  be  for  pastoral  superintendance  and  instruction, 
usually  claims  it  too.  The  fulfilment  of  the  conditions  an- 
nexed to  these  grants,  it  was  only  equitable  that  the  donor 
and  his  heirs  should  exact  and  regulate;  they  were  the  na- 
tural guardians  of  the  charities;  and  when  the  lapse  of  years, 
the  course  of  events,  and  public  convenience,  had  caused 
this  guardianship  to  devolve  upon  the  state,  the  state,  like 
any  other  guardian,  had  a  right  to  superintend  the  trust  so 
as  to  carry  into  effect  the  designs  of  the  donor,  but  no  right 
whatever  to  alienate  it,  apply  it  to  purposes  of  its  own,  and 
thereby  frustrate  those  intentions.  It  had  a  right,  for  in- 
stance, to  provide  the  best  religious  instruction  which  was 
to  be  had,  even  though  it  was  such  as  the  benefactor  had  not 
contemplated;  and  to  exclude  such  as  was  found,  on  a  more 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  subject,  to  be  erroneous,  even 
though  it  was  such  as  the  benefactor  had  sanctioned;  it  be- 
ing obvious  that  his  intention  was  to  guide,  not  to  mislead, 
those  for  whom  he  had  shown  so  lively  an  interest;  but  it 
had  no  right  to  withhold  all  religious  instruction  whatever, 
dispose  of  the  trust  to  the  best  bidder,  and  putting  the  pro- 
duce in  its  pocket,  say  that  it  was  corban.  If  a  professor- 
ship of  astronomy  had  been  founded  by  some  lover  of  the 
science  when  the  system  of  Ptolemy  was  in  the  ascendant, 
surely  the  trustees  of  his  foundation  would  be  thought  to 
satisfy  his  manes  best  by  giving  it  to  a  man  who  would 
now  show  his  pupils  a  more  excellent  way,  and  that  New- 
ton was  right  and  Ptolemy  wrong;  though  contrary  to  the 
ill-informed  notions  of  the  founder  himself;  and  though  he, 
like  the  Jesuits,*  would  possibly  have  denounced  the  inno- 
vation as  heretical;  but  they  would  not  be  thought  to  exe- 

*  See  the  characteristic  declaration  prefixed  to  the  third  volume  of 
the  Jesuits'  edition  of  Newton's  Principia. 


CHURCH  PROPERTY. 


153 


cute  their  trust  to  his  satisfaction  or  to  their  own  credit,  if 
they  voted  astronomy  in  general  to  be  mere  moonshine,  and 
spent  the  fund  that  was  set  apart  for  its  encouragement  in 
an  annual  dinner.  Yet  this  is  the  doctrine  with  regard  to 
the  responsibility  of  the  state  for  the  due  preservation  of  the 
church  establishment  which  is  often  in  these  days  preached, 
as  though  the  state  were  oivners  of  church  property  instead 
of  its  trustees,  and  it  w^as  lawful  for  the  state  to  do  what  it 
would  with  that  which  it  never  gave,  and  which  it  never 
had  to  give.*     But  might  overcomes  right — 

There  is  a  simple  plan, 

That  they  shall  take,  who  have  the  power, 

And  they  shall  keep  who  can. 

And  accordingly  the  council  of  Cromwell  prevailed  with 
the  king  and  the  courtiers,  and  Cranmer  and  Latimer  had 
nothing  to  do  but  to  submit  and  make  the  most  of  such  re- 
sources as  were  left.  Indeed,  the  whole  aspect  of  the  Re- 
formation exhibits  marks  of  the  conflict  of  principles,  under 
which  it  was  brought  about.  The  best  and  the  w^orst  men 
were  busy  in  promoting  it,  each  party  with  a  purpose  of 
their  own;  and  its  graces  and  imperfections  alike  testify 
that  the  hands  which  were  concerned  in  it  were  not  of  one 
fashion;  that  its  walls,  like  those  of  the  second  Jerusalem, 
arose  amidst  fightings  from  without,  "  the  builders  every 
one  having  his  sword  girded  by  his  side,  and  so  building."! 
Happy,  indeed,  it  was  that  such  master-builders  were  to 
be  found:  had  not  this  wise  and  conservative  party  been  at 
hand,  a  party  intent  upon  what  could  be  spared  as  well  as 
what  must  be  sacrificed — what  could  be  restored,  as  well  as 

*  See  an  excellent  pamphlet,  entitled  "The  Revenues  of  the  Church 
not  a  Burden  to  the  Public."  1830. 
t  Nehemiah,  iv.  18, 


154  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

what  must  be  destroyed  utterly — the  vulgar  handlers  of 
axe  and  hammer  would  have  cast  all  to  the  ground,  and  the 
country  would  have  risen  from  its  paroxysm,  rid  indeed  of 
superstition,  but  with  nothing  for  a  substitute,  and  the  latter 
state  of  the  nation  would  have  been  worse  than  the  first.  As 
it  was,  the  troubled  fountain  of  the  Reformation  sent  forth 
streams,  the  one  of  sweet,  the  other  of  bitter  waters,  and  as 
the  principles  of  the  blessed  martyrs,  who  acted  in  it  their 
immortal  parts,  issued  out  in  the  establishment  of  a  church 
of  apostolic  doctrines,  so  did  other  principles,  now  stirred, 
find  their  consummation  (if  indeed  they  found  it  then)  in  the 
eventual  subversion  of  that  church,  and  with  it,  of  the 
throne. 

The  progress  of  the  Reformation  was  attended  (as  all 
great  national  convulsions  are)  with  many  and  sad  excesses. 
The  work  of  destruction,  when  long  continued,  is  in  itself 
a  thing  which  hardens  the  heart:  and  the  Reformation  was 
full  of  it.  Monk  and  nun  turned  out  of  house  and  home, 
pensioned  indeed,  but  (except  in  the  case  of  superiors,  who 
were  treated  with  more  lenity)  pensioned  with  a  miserable 
equivalent;  their  dwelling-places,  beautiful  as  many  of  them 
were,  laid  low,  that  all  hope  of  return  might  be  cutoff,  their 
cells  surrendered  to  the  bats  and  owls;  their  chapels  made 
a  portion  for  foxes,  the  mosaic  "pavements  torn  up,  the 
painted  windows  dashed  in  pieces,  the  bells  gambled  for,  or 
sold  into  Russia  and  other  countries,*  though  often  before 
they  reached  their  destination  buried  in  the  ocean — all  and 
utterly  dismantled,  save,  where,  happening  to  be  parish 
churches,  also,  as  was  the  case  at  St.  Alban's,  Tewkesbury, 
Malvern,  and  elsewhere,  they  were  rescued  in  whole,  or 
in  part,  from  Henry's  harpies,  by  the  petitions  or  the  pecu- 

*  Some  Account  of  Shrewsbury,  p.  128. 


RELAXATION  OF  MORALS,  155 

niary  contributions  of  the  pious  inhabitants;*  libraries,  of 
which  most  monasteries  contained  one,  treated  by  their  new- 
possessors  with  barbaric  contempt;  "  some  books  reserved 
for  their  Jakes,  some  to  scour  their  candlesticks,  some  to 
rub  their  boots,  some  sold  to  the  grocers  and  soap  boilers, 
and  some  sent  over  the  sea  to  book-binders,  not  in  small 
numbers,  but  at  times  whole  shipsful,  to  the  wondering  of 
foreign  nations;  a  single  merchant  purchasing  at  forty  shil- 
lings a  piece  two  noble  libraries  to  be  used  as  gray  paper, 
and  such  as  having  already  sufficed  for  ten  years  were 
abundantly  enough  (says  the  eye-witness  whose  words  are 
here  quoted)  for  many  years  more;t  these  were  some  of 
the  coarser  features  of  those  times;  howbeit  there  were 
many  besides  these.  For  the  churches  were  now  treated 
with  gross  irreverence;  horses  and  mules  were  led  through 
them;  they  were  profaned  by  dogs  and  hawks,  by  doves 
and  owls,  by  stares  and  choughs;|  they  were  plundered 
of  their  plate  by  churchwardens,  or  other  powerful  parish- 
ioners,§  who  might  argue,  that  if  they  spared,  others 
would  spoil;  or  who  might  wish  ill  to  the  cause  of 
the  Reformation,  and  take  such  means  to  scandalise  it. 
London,  says  Latimer,  was  never  so  full  of  ill;  charity  was 
waxen  cold  in  it.  "  Oh,  London,  London,"  cries  this 
earnest  old  man,  "  repent,  repent!  for  I  think  God  more 
displeased  with  London,  than  he  ever  was  with  the  city  of 
Nebo.'l      Such  was  the  profligacy  of  its  youth,    that  he 

*  See  the  Petition  of  the  Inhabitants  of  Holm  Cultram,  in  Cumber- 
land, to  Cromwell,  praying  for  the  preservation  of  the  abbey  church 
there,  A.  D.  1538,     Ellis's  Original  Letters,  ii.  89. 

t  Spelman,  Hist,  and  Fate  of  Sacrilege,  p.  202.  The  extract  is  from 
a  letter  of  John  Bale  to  Leland. 

^  Homily  on  Keeping  clean  of  Churches. 

§  Strype's  Cranmer,  177. 

II  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  60,  61.     Id.  i.  176. 


156  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

marvels  the  earth  gaped  not  to  swallow  it  up.  There  were 
many  that  denied  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  the  exist- 
ence of  a  heaven  or  hell.*  Manly  sports  and  pastimes  had  been 
exchanged  for  the  gaming-table.  Divorces,  even  amongst 
the  inferior  classes  of  society,  were  become  common;  for, 
marriage  being  declared  no  sacrament,  probably  many  chose 
to  interpret  the  declaration  to  mean  that  it  was  no  bond.t 
The  elementary  bread  of  the  eucharist  was  expressed  by 
base  indecent  nicknames.^  The  alehouses  were  filled  with 
profane  disputants  upon  the  mysteries  of  our  faith,  and  the 
dissolute  scoffers  made  songs  upon  them;§  "  Green  Sleeves," 
"  Maggy  Lauder,'  and  '*  John  Anderson  my  Jo,"  with 
numbers  more,  w^ere  all  of  this  class  of  composition;  and 
psalms  (in  this  instance,  perhaps,  without  any  intentional 
levity)  were  set  to  hornpipes.  To  crown  all,  a  multitude 
of  disaffected  persons  were  at  large  in  the  country,  speak- 
ing evil  of  the  dignities,  and  exciting  the  idle,  the  hungry, 
and  the  aggrieved,  to  riot  and  rebellion;  bearding  the 
government  with  audacious  demands  of  changes,  both  civil 
and  ecclesiastical,  to  be  made  at  their  pleasure,  couched  in 
language  the  most  imperative  and  insolent;  "such,"  Cran- 
mer  observes  in  his  answer  to  them,  "  as  was  not  at  any 
time  used  of  subjects  to  their  prince  since  the  beginning  of 
the  world."|| 

Meanwhile,  and  in  the  midst  of  this  general  relaxation 
of  morals,  the  fanatic  was  abroad:  it  was  the  very  field  for 
him;  the  standing  corn  of  the  Philistines  was  not  better 
fitted  for  the  foxes  and  firebrands.     There  were  Predesti- 


*  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  167.  t  Id.  i.  176.  220. 

J  Strype's  Cranmur,  175. 

§  Fox,  1048.     Percy's  Reliqucs  of  English  Poetry,  ii.  291.     Shak 
speare's  Winter  Tale,  act  iv.  sc.  2. 
I)  Strype's  Append.  88. 


FANATICS.  157 

narians,  who  preached  that  the  elect  could  not  sin,  nor  the 
regenerate  fall  from  grace.  Their  religion,  says  a  chaplain 
of  Cranmer,  "  consisted  in  words  and  disputations;  in 
Christian  acts  and  goodly  deeds  nothing  at  all."*  There 
were  Antinomians,  who  taught  that  the  "  chosen"  were  at 
liberty  to  help  themselves  to  such  a  share  of  this  world's 
goods  as  their  necessities  required;  and  that  however  they 
might  sin  in  their  outward  man,  in  the  inner  they  sinned 
not.f  There  were  Anabaptists,  who,  besides  their  theologi- 
cal dogma,  acknowledged  no  judge  or  magistrate,  no  right  of 
war  or  of  capital  punishment.^  There  were  Fifth-monarchy 
men.§  There  were  Arians.  There  were  Unitarians,  who  de- 
nied the  divinity  of  the  second  and  third  persons  of  the  Trinity, 
and  limited  the  benefits  of  Christ's  coming  to  the  knowledge 
he  gave  mankind  of  the  true  God.||  There  were  men  of  the 
family  of  Love,  or  Davidians  as  they  were  called  from  one 
David  George  who  made  himself  sometimes  Christ,  and 
sometimes  the  Holy  Ghost.^  There  were  Libertines,  of 
whose  precise  tenets  we  are  not  informed,  together  with 
other  sects,  some  of  native,  some  of  exotic  growth,  but  all 
combining  a  little  sedition  with  not  a  little  conceit. 

Here,  then,  were  the  beginnings  of  sorrows  laid  up  in 
store  for  the  hapless  Charles,  and  the  church  of  which  he 
was  the  head,  and,  in  his  later  and  more  sobered  years,  the 
ornament.  Now  was  the  nation  fly-blown;  and  it  was  only 
wanted  that  the  days  should  be  fulfilled  when  the  hornets 
would  take  wing,  and  sting  it  into  madness.  So  true  it  is 
that  the  sin  of  a  government,  like  that  of  an  individual,  does 
eventually  find  it  out.     Long  it  may  tarry  before  it  mani- 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  178.  291.  f  Id.  178. 

t  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  135.  249;  ii.  162. 163. 

§  Strype' s  Cranmer,  208.  II  Id.  179. 
IT  Id.  291. 

14 


158  REFORMATION  IN    ExVGLAXD. 

fesls  itself  in  its  effects,  but  a  century  in  the  life  of  a  nation 
is  but  a  span;  and  he  who  destroyed  the  Amalekites  in  the 
time  of  Saul  for  the  transgression  of  the  Amalekites  in  the 
time  of  Moses,  sufiering  his  wrath  to  sleep  four  hundred 
years,  and  then  to  burst  out,  is  still  the  God  of  the  nations, 
and  deals  with  them  still  after  the  same  fashion,  though  the 
natural  consequences  of  the  offence  may  serve  Him  for  the 
ministers  of  his  tardy  vengeance.  For  what  had  the  church 
under  its  new  discipline  and  organisation  to  oppose  to  these 
restless  and  inquisitive  spirits?  Could  it  not  meet  the  evil, 
and  extinguish  it,  whilst  it  was  yet  done  in  the  green  tree? 
Alas!  its  clergy  were  unfit  for  so  delicate  and  difficult  a  work. 
The  Reformation,  owing  to  the  violence  which  had  attend- 
ed and  disgraced  a  noble  cause,  had  depressed  them  as  a 
body;  doubtless  there  were  of  their  number  many  most  able 
men;  none  greater  than  some  of  them  have  been  since  born 
of  woman;  but  with  the  generality  it  was  very  far  otherwise. 
The  impropriation  system  now  began  to  tell  its  tale.  The 
universities  and  schools  had  been  comparatively  deserted. 
It  was  with  extreme  difficulty  that  men  could  now  be  found 
to  preach  at  Paul's  Cross,  once  the  object  of  so  much  cleri- 
cal ambition.  About  the  year  1544,  Bonner  writes  to  Parker, 
then  master  of  Corpus,  importuning  him  to  send  him  help 
from  Cambridge,  and  expressing  his  surprise  that  candi- 
dates should  be  lacking  for  such  an  office.* — "  I  think  there 
be  at  this  day,"  says  Latimer,  in  the  middle  of  Edward 
VI. 's  reign,  "  ten  thousand  students  less  than  were  within 
these  twenty  years. '"t  The  clerical  profession  no  longer  held 
out  the  same  inducements  to  men  of  liberal  acquirements  and 
liberal  minds  to  enter  it.  A  very  considerable  proportion  of 
the  parishes  of  England  were  served  by  priests  utterly  igno- 

*  Strype's  Life  of  Parker,  p.  17.  fol.  cd. 
t  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  246. 


DEPRESSION  OF    THE  CLERGY.  159 

rant  and  unlettered.  The  patrons  had  given  their  benefices  to 
their  menials  as  wages;  to  their  gardeners,  to  the  keepers  of 
their  hawks  and  hounds — these  were  the  incumbents;*  or 
else,  they  had  let  in  fee  both  glebe  and  parsonage,  so  that 
whoever  was  presented  would  have  neither  roof  to  dwell 
under  nor  land  to  live  upon,  but  too  happy  if  his  vicarial 
tithes  afforded  him  a  chamber  at  an  alehouse,  and  the  wor- 
shipful society  of  the  dicers,  and  drinkers  who  frequented  it;t 
nay,  perhaps  himself  the  landlord.^  The  questions  addressed 
by  Bishop  Hooper  to  his  clergy  on  his  primary  visitation 
are  but  too  sadly  characteristic  of  the  condition  of  these 
shepherds  of  the  people: — "  How  many  commandments? 
Where  written?  Can  yon  say  them  by  heart?  What  are 
the  articles  of  the  Christian  faith?  Can  you  repeat  them? 
Can  you  recite  the  Lord's  Prayer?  How  do  you  know  it 
to  be  the  Lord's  Prayer?"§  Were  these  the  men  to  up- 
hold church  and  state,  and  in  critical  times  too?  or  rather 
were  they  not  the  men  to  render  both  contemptible  in  any 
times? 

The  rising  party  of  the  Puritans,  an  active  minority,  busy 
rather  than  powerful  in  the  Scriptures,  given  to  subtle  and 
unprotitable  questions,  would  scoff  at  such  preachers,  and 
teach  their  hearers  to  scoff  at  them  too,  and  this  they  not 
only  could  do,  but  did;  and  with  the  more  mischievous  ef- 
fect, because  (as  it  has  been  already  said)  the  districts  best 
peopled  and  most  intelligent,  the  towns,  were  precisely  the 
very  poorest  livings  in  the  kingdom,  and  were,  therefore, 
the  very  worst  supplied  with  ministers;!]  if,  indeed,  they  were 

*  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  266. 

t  Id.  i.  183.     See  also  the  Ixxvth  Canon. 

t  Id.ii.  58. 

§  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  216.  ||  Latimer,  i.  93. 


160  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

supplied  at  all,  and  not  rather  abandoned  to  whatever  wolf 
might  feel  disposed  to  make  the  fold  his  prey,  the  laity 
themselves  actually  left  to  bury  their  own  dead.*  The  deep 
lasting  wound  which  such  a  clergy  inflicted  upon  the  cha- 
racter and  credit  of  the  church  is  scarcely  to  be  described. 
It  had  not  recovered  itself  in  the  days  of  Herbert,  who  was 
thought  by  his  wordly-minded  friends  "  to  have  lost  him- 
self in  an  humble  way"  when  he  took  orders;  and  who  him- 
self (which  is  more  to  the  purpose),  unambitious  of  distinc- 
tion as  he  was  become,  casually  speaks  of  his  profession 
in  his  "  Country  Parson"  as  one  of  general  ignominy. f  It 
required  the  Augustan  age  of  our  divines — the  age  of  a  Hall 
an  Andrews,  a  Hammond,  a  Sanderson,  a  Taylor,  a  Barrow 
a  South — to  interpose  itself,  in  order  that  public  opinion, 
viewing  the  Church  of  England  through  such  a  medium, 
might  be  compelled  to  do  it  tardy  justice,  and  at  length  to 
reverence  an  establishment  which  had  given  birth  to  so  much 
piety,  so  much  learning,  so  much  genius,  so  much  wisdom, 
and  so  much  wit. 

Nor  was  it  merely  the  ignorance  of  churchmen  that  gave 
the  rising  sectaries  such  advantage; — there  was  treachery  in 
the  camp.  Many  of  the  old  clergy,  conforming  to  the  inno- 
vations that  had  been  made,  (indeed,  during  Henry's  reign, 
those  in  doctrine  were  not  very  considerable,)  still  occupied 
the  pulpits,  but  without  any  love  for  their  present  position. 
On  the  contrary,  it  was  naturally  not  unpleasant  to  them  to 
see  the  elements  of  discord  let  loose,  and  like  the  "  anarch 
old,"  to  watch  the  strife  in  silence,  by  which  they  might 
themselves  hope  in  the  end  again  to  reign.  Homilies  were 
provided,   that  sound,  and  at  any  rate  harmless,  doctrine 

*  See  Bishop  Jewel's  Sermon  on  Haggai,  i.  2,  near  the  end. 

t  Eccles.  Biography,  iv.  508.  Country  Parson,  p.  95.  12mo.  oh.  xxviii. 


DEPRESSION  OF  THE  CLERGY.  161 

might  be  propounded  to  the  people.  They  were,  however, 
often  but  "  homely  handled,"  to  speak  in  Latimer's  vein;* 
for  if  "the  priest  were  naught,  he  would  so  hack  and  chop 
them,  that  it  was  as  good  for  his  hearers  to  be  without  them 
for  any  word  that  should  be  understood."  Neither  were 
these  conformists  the  most  intelligent  of  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic teachers;  on  the  contrary,  they  were  in  general  of  the 
mendicant  orders,  their  recommendation  being  that  they 
would  work  cheap,  and  spare  the  pocket  of  the  patron. 
Neither  were  they  the  most  reputable;  for,  as  a  further  proof 
of  the  honest  motives  which  had  actuated  many  in  their 
spoliation  of  the  church,  the  very  men  who  had  been  de- 
nounced as  unfit  to  live  whilst  they  were  monks,  were  now 
inducted  into  benefices  and  stalls  by  the  parties  to  whom  the 
spiritual  welfare  of  the  people,  forsooth,  had  been  so  dear 
an  object,  in  order  that  they  might  be  thus  relieved  from  the 
payment  of  the  pitiful  pension  with  which  their  property 
was  charged  for  their  support.! 

These  are  miserable  and  disgusting  details;  but  if  thev 
are  so  to  write  and  read,  what  must  they  have  been  to  Cran- 
mer  and  his  colleagues  to  witness!  How  must  their  righteous 
souls  have  been  vexed!  Those  persons  who  give  to  our  re- 
formers credit  for  the  courage  which  they  displayed  in  the 
flames,  and  regard  their  sufferings  as  confined  to  their  mar- 
tyrdom, do  them  poor  justice.  To  jostle  with  so  many  offen- 
sive obstacles  for  so  many  loug  years;  to  persevere  unto  the 
end  in  the  midst  of  so  much  to  thwart,  to  disappoint,  to  irri- 
tate; to  feel  themselves  earnest,  sincere,  and  single-hearted, 
and  to  have  to  encounter  so  much  hypocrisy, •double-deal- 
ing, and  pretence;  to  work  their  weary  way  through  a  sor- 
did and  mercenary  generation,  who  had  a  zeal  for  God's 

*  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  105. 

t  Burnet,  Pref.  ii.  14.  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  36. 

14* 


162  REFORMATION  IN    ENGLAND. 

service  on  their  tongues,  but  who  in  their  hearts  admired 
nothing  of  heaven  save  the  riches  of  its  pavement;  to  see 
the  goodly  fruits  of  all  their  labours  likely  to  perish  through 
sectarian  divisions,  which  might  very  probably  have  been 
healed  by  timely  precaution,  and  the  adoption  (at  some  cost 
to  be  sure)  of  measures  which  they  were  the  first  to  recom- 
mend; these  were  trials  by  that  slow  fire  of  temptation 
which  it  requires  a  stout  heart  and  a  high  principle  to  sus- 
tain, and  though  there  might  be  many  (as  Milton  ungene- 
rously and  ungratefully  puts  it)  who  would  give  their  bo- 
dies to  be  burned,  if  the  occasion  demanded  it,  yet*  there 
would  be  few,  who,  so  tried,  would  find  themselves  so  un- 
weary  in  well-doing. 

They,  however,  have  their  reward;  and  it  was  a  noble 
prize  for  which  they  struggled.  They  are  themselves  gone 
to  heaven  in  their  chariot  of  fire,  and  to  their  country 
they  have  bequeathed  as  a  mantle,  a  free  use  of  the  Bible, 
a  reasonable  faith,  a  pure  ritual,  principles  of  toleration, 
liberty  of  conscience,  and  that  virtue  which  goeth  out  of 
all  these  things,  whereby  a  nation  is  made  to  put  forth  its 
otherwise  dormant  strength  in  the  prosecution  of  commerce 
of  manufactures,  of  agriculture,  of  science,  and  of  whatever 
else  belongs  to  inextinguishable  enterprise. 


163 


CHAPTER  IX. 

CROMWELL. GARDINER. BONNER. THE    ACT    OF    THE    SIX 

ARTICLES. SERMONS    OF    THOSE    DAYS. PROPOSED  DISPO- 
SAL OF    ECCLESIASTICAL    PROPERTY. ARTICLES    OF   1536. 

THE     BIBLE     IN     CHURCHES. BISHOPS*     BOOK. KINg's 

BOOK. 

The  two  great  measures  of  the  supremacy,  and  the  sup- 
pression of  the  abbeys  had  been  carried,  but  with  haste  and 
no  small  violence;  and  now  came  the  recoil.  It  pertained 
to  the  king's  prerogative  that  the  pope  should  be  deposed, 
and  to  his  exchequer  that  the  monasteries  should  be  de- 
spoiled; so  far,  therefore,  Henry  was  a  cordial  reformer. 
Churchwork  is  said  in  general  to  go  up  on  crutches,  and 
to  come  down  post;  and  the  present  case  furnishes  no  ex- 
ception to  the  proverb:  for  now  the  king  well  nigh  deserted 
the  cause  in  which  he  had  been  so  actively  engaged;  and 
having  undone  so  much  of  the  old  religion,  was  disposed 
to  do  nothing  for  the  new;  but,  betaking  himself  to  catholic 
advisers,  surrendered  himself  for  the  most  part  into  their 
hands  during  the  remainder  of  his  reign.  For  though  we 
shall  have  occasion  to  notice  some  acts  of  grace  towards 
the  reformed  faith,  they  are  few  and  feeble,  suggested  by  a 
passing  wish  to  preserve  something  of  consistency,  by  mo- 
mentary caprice,  or  by  the  force  of  conflicting  parties, 
which,  causing  him  to  fall  into  a  place  where  two  seas  met, 
constrained  him  at  least  to  be  still. 

The  abbeys  had  scarcely  been  disposed  of,  when  Crom- 
well, the  political  agent  of  the  reformation,  and  the  indi- 
vidual who  had  succeeded  to  the  greatest  share  of  Wolsey's 


164  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

influence  over  the  king,  fell  into  disgrace.  After  the  un- 
timely death  of  Jane  Seymour,  he  had  ventured  (a  measure 
requiring  as  much  personal  courage  as  the  suppression  of 
the  monasteries)  to  negotiate  a  match  for  his  capricious 
master;  a  match  which,  it  was  thought,  would  bind  Henry 
still  more  closely  with  the  Protestant  cause,  by  connecting 
him  with  the  Lutheran  princes  of  Germany.  But  Crom- 
well's good  genius  had  here  forsaken  him;  Anne  of  Cleves 
was  not  found  to  answer  to  the  agreeable  portrait  which 
Holbein  had  painted  of  her;  on  the  contrary,  she  was  ill- 
favoured;  moreover  she  spoke  Dutch,  a  language  of  which 
the  king  was  ignorant;  and  had  never  learned  music,  of 
which  he  was  passionately  fond.  Henry  became  disgusted, 
and  Cromwell's  position  became  precarious.  Other  osten- 
sible causes  were  of  course  put  forward  to  justify  the  ruin 
of  this  minister;  treason  and  heresy  were  the  stalking-hor- 
ses, but  the  marriage  was  the  snare — "  The  weight  that 
pulled  him  down  was  there."  That  Henry  gave  him  an 
earldom  after  this  period,  is  true  enough;  it  might  be  to 
throw  dust  in  the  eyes  of  the  suspicious;  it  certainly  proved 
but  a  garland  to  deck  the  victim  for  the  altar.  And  now 
Gardiner,  bishop  of  Winchester,  "  that  fox"  who  had  been 
long  upon  the  watch  to  supplant  him,  saw  that  his  oppor- 
tunity was  come,  and  profited  by  it.  Gardiner  and  Crom- 
well had  known  each  other  from  early  years,  having  been 
brought  up  together,  and  of  nearly  the  same  standing  in  the 
household  of  cardinal  Wolsey;  but  there  was  not  room  upon 
the  stage  for  both  of  them  at  a  time;  and  Cromwell  having 
soon  on  his  part  declared  for  the  Reformation,  had  the  king 
with  him;  and  whilst  this  was  the  case,  the  churchman  lay 
by.  Cromwell  seems  lo  have  owed  him  no  good-will,  and 
to  have  taken  no  pains  to  disguise  his  sentiments.  Having 
the  king's  ear,  he  sent  Bonner  to  supersede  him  as  ambas- 
sador in  France;  and  from  the  letters  of  that  monster  (as 


CROMWELL  FALLS  INTO  DISGRACE.  165 

time-serving  then  as  he  was  afterwards  bloody-minded), 
and  which  are  all  meant  to  play  up  to  the  known  tastes  or 
prejudices  of  his  patron,  it  is  plain  enough  that  Gardiner 
was  (Usliked  and  distrusted  by  Cromwell,  whom  he  in  his 
turn  was  as  studious  to  affront  by  the  insults  which  he 
heaped  upon  this  his  mean-spirited  vassal,  and  the  savage 
ill-humour  with  which  he  resigned  to  him  his  office.  He 
returned,  however,  to  England;  and  as  a  man  changes  his 
latitude,  but  not  his  temper,  who  crosses  the  seas,  Gardiner 
still  continued  to  be  a  thorn  in  Cromwell's  side;  and  on  a 
comparison  of  dates,  it  will  be  seen  that  he  had  scarcely  set 
foot  in  England  before  a  change  began  to  manifest  itself  in 
the  counsels  of  the  king,  and  Cromwell's  influence,  even 
long  before  he  was  attainted,  to  decUne.  What,  indeed, 
could  induce  the  latter  to  be  instrumental  to  his  recal 
from  France  (as  Fox  implies  he  was),  and  thereby  to  put 
his  enemy  in  a  situation  where  he  could  do  him  more  mis- 
chief, it  is  vain  at  this  time  of  day  to  inquire;  but  it  seem 
propable  that  Gardiner  was  thought  to  be  playing  a  game 
of  his  own  in  his  master's  service;  and  to  be  accommodat- 
ing the  foreign  relations  of  his  country  to  a  policy  that 
suited  himself,  or  at  least  the  cause  which  he  had  at  heart.* 
But  in  truth  it  must  have  been  a  very  difficult  matter  for  a 
minister  of  those  times  to  have  found  the  right  place  for 
the  bishop  of  Winchester,  whose  talents  where  such,  that 
it  was  alike  unsafe  to  use  or  to  refuse  them.  The  character 
of  this  double-edged  tool  the  king  had  learned  to  appreciate 
when  it  was  too  late;  and  on  making  a  fresh  will  shortly 
before  his  death,  showed  no  disposition  to  meddle  with  it 
more,  by  excluding  Gardiner  from  the  number  of  his  exe- 
cutors (for  in  a  former  will,  which  was  now  cancelled,  his 
name  was  found  amongst  them),  and  on  being  reminded  of 

*  Fox's  Acts  and  Mon.  ii.  380. 


166  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  omission  by  Sir  Anthony  Browne,  he  replied,  that  he 
had  acted  advisedly,  seeing  that  "  if  he  were  in  his  testa- 
ment he  would  cumber  them  all."* 

Gardiner,  however,  once  dominant,  maintained  the  as- 
cendency of  the  Romish  party  and  principles  to  the  last  of 
Henry's  reign.  He  had,  indeed,  powerful  coadjutors.  The 
Howards  were  devoted  to  the  same  cause;  and  the  natural 
influence  of  that  distinguished  house  was  then  accidentally 
increased  by  the  alliance  which  the  king  was  about  to  form 
with  one  of  its  members.  Then,  again,  he  strengthened 
himself  by  the  king's  fears.  If  he  found  him  makmg  any 
demonstrations  of  a  nearer  approach  to  the  Reformers,  he 
could  threaten  him  with  the  displeasure  of  the  emperor,  and 
picture  to  him  the  jealousy  with  w'hich  he  was  already  re- 
garded by  the  European  powers,  as  the  royal  ringleader  of 
heresy.  The  expectation  too  of  a  general  council  shortly 
to  be  held  for  the  settlement  of  religious  differences,  and 
which  finally  fixed  itself  at  Trent,  threw  its  weight  into  the 
same  scale.  Henry  might  think  it  his  policy  not  to  commit 
himself  farther  with  the  faithful  sons  of  the  church  till  the 
storm  was  overpast.  Not  was  it  a  slight  matter  in  favour 
of  Gardiner,  that  the  king,  in  a  rash  hour,  had  become  an 
author;  that  his  sentiments  on  the  leading  doctrines  of  the 
Reformers  were  put  upon  irrevocable  record;  and  that  now 
to  flinch  from  his  positions  would  be  to  resign  the  laurels 
which  his  reputed  scholarship  had  won  for  him;  and,  what 
was  still  less  to  his  taste,  would  be  to  pronouncce  that  in 
matters  of  opinion  even  he  himself  was  not  infallible.  No 
man  was  better  qualified  to  take  advantage  of  these  or  any 
other  incidents  which  might  make  for  his  object  than  Gar- 
diner, the  most  astute  politician  of  his  time;  while  Cranmer, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  nothing  to  oppose   to  him  but  the 

*  Fox,  ii.  647. 


ASCENDANCY  OF  GARDINER.  167 

spirit  of  an  Israelite  indeed,  alike  unfit  for  contriving  plots 
hhnself,  or  for  discovering  them  in  another;  for  of  him  it 
might  have  been  said;  as  it  was  said  of  one  of  his  most  con- 
spicuous successors  in  the  see  of  Canterbury  (though  a 
character  upon  the  whole  very  different  from  his),  that  "  too 
secure  in  a  good  conscience,  and  most  sincere  worthy  in- 
tention, with  which  no  man  was  ever  more  plentifully  re- 
plenished, he  thought  he  could  manage  and  discharge  the 
place  and  office  of  the  greatest  minister  in  the  court  without 
any  other  friendship  or  support  than  what  the  splendour  of 
a  pious  life  and  his  accomplished  integrity  would  reconcile 
to  him;  which  was  an  unskilful  measure,"  adds  the  great 
historian,  whose  experience  it  is  presumptuous  to  question, 
yet  whose  conclusion  it  is  painful  to  admit,  "  in  a  licentious 
age,  and  may  deceive  a  good  man  in  the  best  of  times  that 
shall  succeed;  which  exposed  him  to  such  a  torrent  of  ad- 
versity and  misery,  as  we  shall  have  too  natural  an  occasion 
to  lament  in  the  following  discourse,  in  which  it  will  be 
more  reasonable  to  enlarge  of  his  singular  abilities  and  im- 
mense virtue."*  Soon  had  Cranmer  reason  to  exclaim  of 
those  now  admitted  into  the  king's  counsels,  "  Ye  are  too 
hard  for  me!"  for  now  is  past  the  act  of  the  Six  Articles 
(the  whip  with  six  strings  as  it  was  called),  the  death-war- 
rant of  so  many  innocent  men,  whereby,  1.  the  doctrine  of 
transubstantiation  was  established  by  law;  2.  the  commu- 
nion in  both  kinds  excluded;  3.  the  marriage  of  priests  for- 
bidden; 4.  vows  of  celibacy  declared  obligatory;  5.  private 
masses  for  souls  in  purgatory  upheld;  and  6.  auricular  con- 
fession pronounced  expedient,  and  necessary  to  be  retained. 
The  penalties  annexed  to  the  breach  of  these  decrees  being 
for  the  first,  to  be  burnt  as  a  heretic,  for  the  others  to  be 
hanged  as  a  felon,  and  in  all  cases  to  forfeit  lands  and  goods 

*  Clarendon's  Hist,  of  the  Rebellion,  i.  102. 


168  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

to  the  king  as  a  traitor.  Against  these  sanguinary  articles 
Cranmer  lifted  up  his  voice  in  parliament  for  three  days 
together  in  vain.  He,  on  that  occasion,  was  acknowledged 
by  his  opponents  to  have  played  a  noble  part;  and  the  king, 
whose  redeeming  virtue  it  was  to  deal  kindly  with  this  single- 
hearted  man,  expressed  his  sense  of  the  zeal,  the  honesty, 
and  the  learning  with  which  he  had  withstood  court  and  par- 
liament to  the  face;  by  commanding  the  chief  lords  to  dine 
with  the  archbishop  at  Lambeth  after  the  bill  was  passed, 
and  to  *'  signify  unto  him  that  it  was  the  king's  pleasure 
that  all  should  in  his  Highness'  behalf  cherish,  comfort, 
and  animate  him."*  The  king,  who  understood  the  beauty 
of  his  character,  was  faithful  to  his  pledge,  however  faith- 
less were  some  of  his  messengers;  and  within  two  years 
after,  when  two  several  attempts  were  made — the  one  by 
the  clergy,  the  other  by  the  council,  and  both  probably  by 
Gardiner — to  bring  the  archbishop  under  the  operation  of 
this  cruel  act,  and  so  to  run  him  down,  Henry  generously 
interposed,  and  casting  his  sceptre  before  the  pack  that  was 
open-mouthed  to  tear  this  noble  quarry  in  pieces,  called  them 
off,  and  rescued  the  victim.!  It  is  singular,  and  characteris- 
tic of  the  man,  and  of  his  unsuspicious  temperament,  that 
in  both  instances  his  sovereign  was  the  first  person  to  ap- 
prise him  of  his  danger;  in  the  one  case  calling  him  into 
his  barge,  as  he  passed  by  Lambeth  Bridge,  and  addressing 
hiixi — "  O  my  chaplain,  now  I  know  who  is  the  greatest 
heretic  in  Kent,"  and  thereupon  putting  him  in  possession 
of  the  charges  of  his  accusers,  and  giving  him  directions  for 
vindicating  his  own  innocence,  and  bringing  his  enemies  to 
shame;  in  the  other  case  sending  for  him  out  of  bed  at  mid- 
night, and  acquainting  him  that  the  council  had  demanded 
his  commitment  to  the  Tower,  as  being  one  who  sowed 

*  Fox,  ii.  508.  t  Strype's  Cranmer,  pp.  114.  116. 


HENRY  S  KINDNESS  TO  CRANMER.  169 

heresy  and  sedition  throughout  the  realm,  and  that  the  next 
day  the  deed  was  to  be  done.      What  follows  is  a  scene 
of  very  touching  beauty,  whether  as  given  by  Fox  or  Strype; 
and  as  the  incident  is  full  of  dramatic  effect,  it  is  happy  that 
Shakspeare  has  set  upon  it  his  own  mark,  and  thereby  res- 
cued it  from  the  clownish  hand  of  any  ordinary  playwright. 
At  the  same  time  it  may  be  remarked,  that  his  characters 
have  their  parts  allotted  to  them  without  any  very  strict 
attention  to  historical  fidelity,  and  sometimes  in  violation 
of  it.      Whether  our  poet  like  those  of  Italy,  both  ancient 
and  modern,  had  his  own  favourites  amongst  the  great  of 
the  country,  and  so  doled  out  his  measures  of  immortality 
or  infamy  accordingly — whether  the  popularity  of  the  reign- 
ing queen  did  not  influence  the  estimation  in  which  the 
memory  of  her  father's  courtiers  was  held;   or  whether, 
which  is  the  most  probable,  Shakspeare,  with  his  usual  in- 
difference to  the  minuter  matters  of  his  drama,  did  not  put 
words  into  the  mouths  of  his  speakers  somewhat  at  random, 
and  without  much  concern  as  to  their  being  strictly  the  pro- 
perty of  the  individual  bishop,  earl,  or  duke,  who  was  liiL^le 
to  utter  them — suffice  it  to  say,  in  the  language  of  our  mar- 
tyrologists,  that  when  the  king  had  spoke  his  mind,  the 
archbishop  kneeled  down  and  said,  "  I  am  content,  if  it 
please  your  Grace,  with  all  my  heart  to  go  thither  at  your 
Highness's  commandment;  and  I  most  humbly  thank  your 
Majesty  that  I  may  come  to  my  trial;  for  there  be  that  have 
in  many  ways  slandered  me,  and  now  this  way  I  hope  to 
try  myself  not  worthy  of  such  report."      The  king,  per- 
ceiving the  man's  uprightness,  joined  with  such  simplicity, 
said,  "  Oh  Lord!  what  a  man  be  you!  what  simplicity  is  in 
you!  I  had  thought  that  you  would  rather  have  sued  to  us 
to  have  taken  the  pains  to  have  heard  you  and  your  ac- 
cusers together  for  your  trial,  without  any  such  endurance. 
Do  you  know  what  state  you  be  in  with  the  whole  world  and 
15 


170  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

how  many  great  enemies  you  have?  Do  you  not  consider 
what  an  easy  thing  it  is  to  procure  three  or  four  false  knaves 
to  witness  against  you?  Think  you  to  have  better  hick  that 
way  than  your  master  Christ  had!"* 

With  these  and  other  words  to  the  same  effect,  the  king 
gave  him  his  ring,  which  in  case  of  extremity  he  might  pro- 
duce at  the  council,  and  by  virtue  of  it  appeal  to  Caesar.  He 
did  so,  and  thus  Cranmer  escaped  out  of  their  hands.     But 
all  had  not  the  same  friend,  nor  therefore  the  same  fortune; 
for  it  is  to  be  observed,  that  the  commissioners  appointed  to 
carry  the  Six  Articles  into  execution  did  not  confine  their 
investigations  to  offences  coming  directly  under  the  act,  but, 
erecting  themselves  into  a  kind  of  inquisition-general,  they 
took  cognisance  of  all  that  was  done  after  a  manner  which 
they  called  heresy,  whatever  it   might  be;   and  neglect  of 
confession  in  Lent,  absence  from  church,  forbearing  to  creep 
to  the  cross  on  Good  Friday,  neglecting  the  use  of  the  rosa- 
ry, eating  meat  at  interdicted  seasons,  and  the  Hke,  were  all 
misdemeanors  fetched  within  the  compass  of  this  cruel  drag- 
net of  the  Six  Articles.     Accordingly,  the  prisons  of  Lon- 
don were  gorged  with   culprits;t  for  now   an  opportunity 
was  afforded  of  raking  up  old  suspicions,  and  putting  all 
upon  their  purgation.  Many  are  the  affecting  stories  of  those 
days  which  have   come  down  to  us;  glimpses  of  the  do- 
mestic troubles  of  an  age  called  so  loudly  to  bear  the  cross. 
The  meetings  by  stealth  amongst  the  friends  of  the  common 
cause,   amongst  the  brethren  (as  they  named  themselves, 
after  the  manner  of  the  early  Christians);  a  fraternity,  for 
instance,  of  students  at  Oxford,  not,  like  Wesley's  liule  so- 
ciety in  the  same  place,  taking  joyfully  the  persecution  of  a 
tolerant  age,  which  conferred  distinction  at  an  easy  rate;  but 
adopting  every   precaution   to  walk  unseen,    and   all   not 

*  Eccles.  Bio4,^  iii.  478.  t  Fox,  ii.  530,  et  seq. 


BARNES  THE  MARTYR.  171 

enough;  trusting  their  lives  to  each  other's  hands;  abetting 
the  escape;  supplying  the  disguise;  recommending  the  fugi- 
tive to  some  distant  and  less  suspected  brother;  kneeling  with 
him  before  he  went  his  way,  to  beg  God's  blessing  upon  his 
enterprise,  bidding  him  farewell  with  soirowful  heart  and 
sad  foreboding  that  they  should  see  his  face  in  the  flesh  no 
more;  baffling  the  inquiry  of  the  pursuer;  risking  the  charac- 
ter and  fate  of  an  accomplice;  braving  the  rack  rather  than 
betray  the  innocent  blood;  dying  by  inches  in  the  dungeon, 
the  feet  in  the  stocks,  or  the  neck  and  legs  trussed  together 
by  some  devilish  engine  ("  the  devil  on  the  neck")  which 
contracted  with  the  writhings  of  the  sufferer,  till  his  frame 
was  crushed  within  its  iron  grasp;*— these  are  some  of  the 
silent  horrors  of  those  dreadful  days,  of  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  read,  without  thankfulness  to  Providence  that  our  lot 
has  been  cast  on  times  of  greater  charity;  and  without  con- 
fessing that,  grievous  as  the  evil  is  of  capricious  division 
upon  religious  questions,  it  is  far  less  than  that  of  barbarous 
coercion  to  unanimity;  and  bad  as  the  spirit  is,  wherever  it 
exists,  which  would  preach  Christ  only  of  envy  and  strife, 
it  is  after  all  better  than  that  which  would  make  a  way  for 
his  reception  by  fire  from  heaven. 

But  though  many  of  the  reformers  thus  kept  their  opin- 
ions to  themselves,  or  only  communicated  them  to  their  con- 
fidential companions,  and  when  the  doors  were  shut;  there 
were  others  of  a  more  intrepid  spirit,  who  saved  the  com- 
missioners the  necessity  of  resorting  to  force  or  fraud  for 
their  conviction  by  publicly  contending  for  the  faith,  and 
even  carrying  the  war  into  the  enemy's  borders.  A  martyr 
of  this  kind  was  Dr.  Barnes;  he  preached  openly  at  Paul's 
Cross,  where  he  upheld  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith 

*  Fox,    See  the  story  of  Garret,  ii.  517,  and  of  Porter,  ii.  536. 


172  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

only,  (a  tenet  that  seems  to  have  been  almost  as  unpalatable 
to  the  Roman  catholics  as  a  renunciation  of  transubstantiation 
itself,)  and  challenged  Gardiner  to  the  controversy,  against 
whom  indeed  this  sermon  was  directed,  m  reply  to  one 
which  he  had  delivered  from  the  same  popular  pulpit  short- 
ly before.  There  is  a  passage  in  his  discourse  very  expres- 
sive of  the  rude  style  of  preaching  which  in  those  days  pre- 
vailed, and  which  the  friars  in  Italy,  and  probably  else- 
where, have  not  yet  entirely  abandoned.  Barnes  calls  upon 
Stephen  Gardiner  by  name  to  answer  him;  alluding  in  "  a 
pleasaunt  allegory"  (as  John  Fox  expresses  it — an  opinion 
to  which  the  priests  in  Spanish  America  would  still  sub- 
scribe) to  a  cock-fight,  wherein  he  likens  Gardiner  to  a  fight- 
ing cock,  and  himself  to  another,  and  reproaches  his  antago- 
nist with  lacking  good  spurs,  as  being  a  garden-cock;  then 
shifting  his  joke,  he  taxes  him  with  being  a  bad  gardener, 
as  having  set  evil  herbs  in  the  garden  of  God's  Scriptures; 
and  once  more  changing  his  weapon,  he  accuses  him  of  a 
want  of  logic  and  grammar-rules;  alleging,  in  reference  io 
the  act  of  the  Six  Articles,  that  if  he  had  expressed  himself 
in  the  schools  as  he  had  done  at  the  Cross,  he  would  have 
given  him  six  stripes.*  Latimer's  sermons,  almost  the  only 
complete  specimens  we  have  of  the  pulpit  oratory  of  that 
time,  are  full  of  the  same  familiar,  not  to  say  mean,  images, 
— tales  of  Robni  Hood,  or  of  the  Godwin  Sands,  or  of  an 
execution  at  Oxford,  or  of  the  woman  going  to  church  at 
St.  Thomas  of  Acres,  because  she  could  not  gel  a  wink  of 
sleep  m  any  other  place — mixed  up  with  puns  the  most  idle 
and  similes  the  most  unsavoury.!  Two  other  sermons  we 
have   seen   of  the  same   date,  by  one  Thomas    Lewer,  a 

*  Fox,  ii.  525. 

t  See  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  187.  227.  133.  181:  also  Fox,  ii.  525, 
the  sermon  of  one  Seton,  on  Justification  by  Faith  only. 


SERMONS  ON  THOSE   DAYS.  173 

master  of  St  John's  College,  Cambridge,  preached  the 
one  at  Paul's  Cross,  the  other  before  the  king,  and  both 
in  the  year  1550,  and  these  are  not  much  less  conversational 
in  their  tone  than  those  of  Latimer.  The  coarse  material 
of  hortatory  theology  at  the  Reformation  and  before  it, 
imparts  its  character  in  a  degree  to  our  Homilies,  which, 
however  full  of  sound  doctrine  and  wholesome  advice, 
would  often  not  a  little  shock  the  sense  of  ears  polite, 
were  they  to  be  faithfully  delivered  in  our  churches.  And 
later  still,  Fuller  tells  us,  in  his  History  of  the  University 
of  Cambridge,  of  a  country  parson  in  his  time  who  preached 
at  St.  Mary's  on  the  words,  "  God  hath  dealt  to  every 
one  the  measure  of  faith"  (Rom.  xii.  3.;)  when,  in  a  fond 
imitation,  as  he  says,  of  Latimer's  famous  card  sermons,  he 
followed  out  the  metaphor  of  dealing',  that  men  should 
play  above-board,  or  avoid  dissimulation;  not  pocket  the 
cards,  or  improve  their  gii^is;  folloiv  suit,  that  is,  wear  the 
surplice,  and  conform  to  ceremonies.*  Jeremy  Taylor 
sometimes  narrowly  escapes  the  like  extravagance.  South 
approaches  it  still  more  frequently,  and  almost  with  as  little 
ceremony  as  would  have  been  used  a  century  earlier;  and 
even  in  the  majestic  and  sober  Barrow,  expressions,  if  not 
figures,  occasionally  startle  us,  as  below  the  dignity  of  the 
pulpit  and  the  gravity  of  the  Christian  teacher.  Even  he 
does  not  scruple  to  talk  of  "  time  rendering  God's  goodness 
more  precious,  as  it  doth  gold  and  wine," — of  the  difficulty 
of  curing  a  wounded  reputation,  and  "  spreading  the  plaster 
so  far  as  the  sore  hath  reached," — of  "  the  fox  who  said 
that  the  grapes  were  sour,  because  he  could  not  reach  them; 
and  that  the  hare  was  dry  meat  because  he  could  not  catch 
it,"  — of  the  man  who  would  have  his  sickle  in  another's 
corn,  or  an  oar  in  another's  boat,  being  in  no  condition  to 


*  Hist,  of  Cambridge,  p.  103. 
15* 


174  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

wonder  if  his   fingers  be   rapped," — of   "  liberality  being 
the  most  beneficial  traflSc  that  can  be,  seeing  that  it  is  bring- 
ing our  wares  to  the  best  market,  and  letting  out  our  money 
to  the  best  hands;  God  repaying  us   with  vast  usury,  an 
hundred  to  one  being  the  rate   he  allows  at  present,  and 
above  a  hundred   millions   to   one  the  rate  he  will  render 
hereafter,  so  that  if  we  will  be  merchants  this  way,  we 
shall  be  sure  to  thrive."*     Soon  after  this  time  pulpit  ora- 
tory began  to  go  upon  stilts;  and,  becoming  more  remote 
from  the  conceptions  and  phraseology  of  the  vulgar,  lost 
much  of  its  interest  with  them,  and  influence  over  them, 
and  at  length  made  way  for  the  field  preacher,  who  spoke 
to  them  once  again,  as  it  were,  in  the  Hebrew  tongue,  to 
which  they  gave  the  more  silence.     Whilst,  however,  we 
may  regret  the  want  of  the  nervous  asperity  of  style  and 
profusion  of  matter  of  the  days  of  Barrow,  we  may  con- 
gratulate ourselves  upon  our  escape  from    the  old-wives' 
tales  of  the  days  of  Latimer.     They  had  their  origin  in  a 
very  different  state  of  society,  and  a  very  different  condition 
of  the  church.     Something  must  be  ascribed  to  the  general 
rudeness  of  an  age  when  bear-baiting  was  the  amusement 
which  a  queen  provided  for  the  foreign  ambassadors,  and 
of  which  herself  and  her  court  were  wilHng  spectators; — 
when  a  fool  was  a  part  of  the  establishment  even  of  the 
most  refined  households,  and  his   uncouth  jokes  were  paid 
for  by  the  year; — when  the  martyr  in  prison  could  in  all 
sober  sadness  address  words  of  comfort  to  his  fellow-sufTerer, 
"  Green,^^  as  a  dainty  dish  for  the  Lord's  own  tooth;"  or  to 
Philpot,  as  "  a  pot  filled  with  the  most  precious  liquor;" — 
and  when  at  the  stake,  not  think  it  out  of  character,  or  out 
of  season,  to  crack  a  jest  upon  his  own  dress  or  his  own 
corpulence.      Something,  again,  must  be  imputed  to  the 

*  Barrow's  Works,  fol.  ed.  i.  94.  260.  267.  305.  456. 


SERMONS  ON  THOSE  DAYS.  175 

circumstances  under  which  a  preacher  before  the  Reforma- 
tion, and  indeed  for  many  years  subsequent  to  it,  delivered 
his  sermon.     It  was  very  frequently  in  the  open  air  that  he 
spake — from  the  steps  of  a  cross,  as  at  Paul's  Cross,  the 
most   famous   of   the   day;    the    congregation    assembling 
around  it,  and  only  adjourning  to  the  "  shrouds"  (as  some 
of  the  vaults  of  the  church  were  called)  when  the  weather 
was  unfavourable.     Latimer's  sermons  before  Edward  VI. 
were  preached  in  a  garden  of  the  palace  of  Westminster, 
the  people  having  admission,  and  the  king  hearing  them 
from  one  of  his  windows.*     The  effect  of  such  an  arrange- 
ment was,  to  divest  sermons  of  all  form;  to  render  them 
vernacular  and  colloquial:  they  were,   in  fact,   what  their 
name  indicates — not  harangues,  nor  orations,  but  unwritten 
discourses,  or  at  most  from  notes,t  and  partook  of  all  the 
characteristics  of  ordinary  discourse;    the    preaching  from 
"  bosom  sermons,"   or  from   writing,  being  considered  a 
lifeless  practice  before  the  Reformation,  and  a  fit  subject  of 
reproach;  and  the  origin  of  it  was,  perhaps,  no  other  than 
an  apprehension  of  the  preacher  in  those  days  of  jealousy, 
lest  he  should  be  caught  in  his  words,  and  misrepresented 
to  those  in  power,  which  induced  him  to  commit  his  thoughts 
to  paper;  or  a  determination  of  his  superiors  that  he  should 
be  held  to  whatever  he  uttered  from  the  pulpit,  which  com- 
pelled him  to  do  so.:|:     Something  again,  is  to   be  referred 
to  the  connection  which  subsisted  in  Roman  Catholic  times 
between  the  church  and  the  stage.      The  Bible  histories 
were  dramatised;  a  generation  which  had  not  the  Sriptures 
to  read,  and   could  not  have  read  them  if  they  had,  were 

*  Latimer's  Sermons,  i.  183. 

t  Fox,  ii.  684;  where  Bonner  defends  himself  for  having  overlooked 
some  of  the  king's  injunctions  in  his  sermon,  by  reason  of  his  book 
of  notes  having  "  in  his  sermon-time  fallen  away  from  him." 

X  See  Eccles.  Biog.  i.  303. 


176  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

taught  by  theatrical  representation.  It  was  upon  this  prin- 
ciple that  the  use  of  images  was  defended:  they  were  said 
to  be  the  poor  man's  books;  and  miracle  plays  were  actually 
performed  in  the  churches.  This  ill-omened  union,  how- 
ever, without  exalting  the  theatre,  debased  theology,  and 
constantly  justified  the  apprehensions  which  Andrew  Marvel 
expressed  in  the  particular  instance  of  Parrdise  Lost,  lest 
the  poet 


or  lest. 


"  Should  ruin  (for  he  saw  him  strong) 
The  sacred  truths  to  fable  and  old  song;" — 

— — '*  if  a  work  so  infinite  be  spann'd, 
Jealous  he  was  that  some  less  skilful  hand 
(Such  as  disquiet  always  what  is  well, 
And  by  ill  imitating  would  excel) 
Might  hence  presume  the  whole  creation's  day, 
To  change  in  scenes,  and  show  it  in  a  play." 

Lastly,  much  of  this  coarseness  and  levity,  which,  accord- 
ing to  our  present  notions,  seems  to  border  on  the  profane, 
was  to  be  put  to  the  account  of  the  friars.  They  were 
the  popular  preachers  of  their  day.  Their  Lent  sermons 
attracted  multitudes;  and  as  their  order  had  its  very  foun- 
dations laid  in  the  taste  of  the  many,  its  daily  bread  depend- 
ing upon  the  mites  which  were  cast  into  the  treasury,  and  the 
amount  of  such  contributions  (individually  so  small)  result- 
ing altogether  from  their  number,  no  pains  were  spared  to 
minister  to  the  vulgar  appetite,  on  every  occasion,  such 
viands  as  were  most  palatable;  and  the  subtleties  of  the 
school  doctors  and  their  operose  learning  gave  way  before 
the  language,  allusions,  and  illustrations  of  common  life;  and 
the  homely  story  and  the  broad  joke  mingled  themselves 
with  subjects  the  most  sacred.  But  whatever  the  cause 
might  be,  the  style  of  the  Roman  Catholic  preacher  was 


DISPOSAL  OF  ECCLESIASTICAL  PROPERTY.  177 

extremely  familiar;  and  this  fashion;  we  have  seen,  had  not 
entirely  worn  itself  out  in  the  first  century  after  the  Refor- 
mation. 

But  to  return  to  the  thread  of  our  narrative.  Out  of  the 
examinations  and  convictions  that  took  place  under  the  Six 
Articles  one  good  at  least  issued — that  Cranmer  appears  to 
have  been  hereby  led  to  re-consider  his  opinion  on  transub- 
stantiation.  Hitherto  it  had  been  strictly  conformable  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  church  of  Rome:  he  now  saw  many  intelli- 
gent men,  powerful  in  the  Scriptures,  brought  up  as  offenders 
against  this  cardinal  dogma,  and  heard  them  vindicate  their 
heterodoxy  in  a  manner  to  make  an  impression  upon  a  can- 
did mind  like  his  own;  so  that  by  the  end  of  the  reign  of 
Henry,  his  belief  on  this  article  had  undergone  a  change, 
and  one  of  his  earliest  acts  under  Edward  was  to  avow  and 
proceed  upon  it. 

It  has  been  said,  that  from  the  date  of  the  dissolution  of 
the  religious  houses,  the  Reformation  laboured  in  its  pro- 
gress. Even  Henry  seems  to  have  been  appalled  at  the  vio- 
lent reaction  which  followed,  and  to  have  held  his  hand. 
But  those  wise  and  good  men  whose  object  it  had  been  all 
along  to  save  what  they  could  of  the  wreck,  out  of  which  to 
construct  another  ark,  were  still  on  the  watch  to  promote 
the  great  cause  in  which  they  were  embarked,  both  by  per- 
manent institutions  and  present  instruction.  Accordingly, 
whoever  might  be  the  advisers  of  the  measure,  out  of  the 
spoils  of  the  monasteries  six  new  bishoprics  were  now  foun- 
ded— those  of  Westminster  (since  suppressed),  Chester, 
Gloucester,  Peterborough,  Oxford,  and  Bristol,  together 
with  deaneries  and  prebends  respectively  annexed,  all  slen- 
derly endowed,  and  upon  the  whole  a  sad  falling  off  from 
the  splendid  expectations  which  the  king  had  originally 
held  forth  of  eighteen  new  sees,  together  with  a  proportional 


178  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

number  of  suffragrans — expectations  which  the  act  of  sup- 
pression had  encouraged,  and  by  which  many  were  recon- 
ciled to  the  confiscation  of  the  church  property,  as  hoping 
that  it  was  only  to  be  fused  and  cast  into  a  better  mould, 
Its  authors,  however,  "  liked  not  that  paying  again;  it  was 
a  double  trouble."    Accordingly  they  compounded  with  the 
creditor,  and  the  dividend  (with  the  addition  of  funds  for  the 
endowment  of  some  of  the  metropolitan  hospitals,  a  few 
professorships  in  either  university,  and  a  college  in  Cam- 
bridge,) was  what  we  have  seen.     The  cathedrals  fared 
better  than  the  monasteries;   having  been  hitherto  in  the 
hands  of  the  regulars,  they  were  now  put  upon  the  same 
footing  as  the  new  institutions  of  the  like  kind,  and  their  re- 
venues appropriated  to  the  maintenance  of  secular  dignita- 
ries. Here,  however,  the  plan  proposed  by  Cranmer,  owing 
probably  to  the  opposition  of  the  Roman   Catholic  party, 
was  not  adopted.   In  the  settling  down  of  the  establishment 
once  more,  it  was  his  wish  that  the  cathedrals   should  be 
converted  into  theological  colleges;  that  readers  of  divinity, 
of  Hebrew,  and  of  Greek  should  be  attached  to  them;  that 
a  body  of  students  should  be  maintained  in   them,  out  of 
whom  the  bishops  might  always  find  clerical  recruits  duly 
qualified  for  the  pastoral  office;  that  here,  in  short,  should 
be  realised  a  second  time  the  institution  which  Samuel  (the 
great  reformer  of  his  own  church)   established  throughout 
all  the  land  of  Israel,  "  schools  of  the  prophets,"  and  that 
thus  might  be  filled  up  most  effectually  the  gap  which  had 
been  occasioned  in  the  system  of  public  instruction  by  the 
extinction  of  the  religious  orders.     What  might  have  been 
the  eflJect  of  such  a  measure,  which  would  have  completed 
the  Reformation  in  an  important  particular  where  it  was  left 
greatly  defective,  it  may  now  be  in  vain  to  conjecture.  Whe- 
ther such  establishments  might  not  have  contributed  to  stave 


DISPOSAL  OF  ECCLESIASTICAL  PROPERTY.  179 

off  tlie  crisis  which  was,  at  hand  from  the  puritans — a  party 
then  beginning  to  take  a  shape,  and  which  owed  its  rapid 
development  to  the  ineffectual  opposition  presented  to  it  by 
a  feeble  and  ignorant  clergy — whether  much  schism  and  se. 
paration  of  a  more  recent  date  might  not  have  been  escaped 
by  the  aspect  which  these  conspicuous  pillars  of  orthodoxy 
would  have  presented  in  different  districts,  and  to  which 
public  opinion  might  have  looked,  as  to  light-houses,  for  a 
guidance — whether,  fertile  as  our  church  has  been  in  great 
divines,  the  liarvest  might  not  have  proved  still  more  abun- 
dant when  a  regular  theological  education,  comprising  a 
sound  knowledge  of  Hebrew,  of  the  Fathers,  of  whatever 
else  might  conduce  to  the  formation  of  the  instructed 
scribe,  fell  systematically  to  the  lot  of  all  who  were  intend- 
ed for  the  ministry; — whether  a  cheap  education  like  this 
would  not  have  afforded  opportunities  for  youths  of  promise 
amongst  the  poorer  classes  to  emerge  from  obscurity,  and 
to  enter  a  profession  for  which  nature  had  fitted  them,  but 
accident  had  shut  to  the  door;  whether  the  church  would 
not  have  been  a  gainer  by  the  additional  talent  which  would 
thus  have  been  called  forth  in  her  service,  when  the  "  yeo- 
man's sons,"  by  whom,  according  to  Latimer,  "  the  faith  in 
Christ  had  been  hitherto  maintained  chiefly,"  and  "  the 
husbandman's  children,"  who  are  often  endowed  (as  Cran- 
mer  strenuously  argues  upon  this  very  subject)  with  singu- 
lar gifts,  would  have  sent  in  their  contribution  to  the  public 
stock; — and  whether  that  same  cause  of  attachment  which 
bound  the  common  people  to  the  friars,  and  through  them 
to  the  church  itself,  namely,  the  feeling  that  they  had  a  per- 
sonal interest  and  relationship  in  many  of  its  ministers, 
would  not  have  been  hereby  more  effectually  perpetuated: — 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  whether  such  institutions  might  not 
have  withdrawn  the  clergy  too  much  from  all  secular  inter- 


180  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

course,  and  prevented  those  connections  of  private  friend- 
ship or  private  tuition  from  being  formed,  to  which  our 
schools  and  universities  give  occasion; — whether  the  alliance 
between  church  and  state  is  not  principally  continued  by 
such  interlacements,  and  would  not  be  greatly  weakened 
by  their  disruption; — whether,  again,  the  provision  which 
our  cathedrals  (on  their  present  footing)  offer  to  the  younger 
sons  of  powerful  families  (as  the  monasteries  once  did)  does 
not  pledge  those  families  more  deeply  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  establishment; — whether  the  rewards,  again,  which  they 
enable  the  church  occasionally  to  confer  on  those  who  have 
done  her  good  service  as  men  of  letters  may  not  contribute 
to  create  a  learned  clergy,  by  furnishing  the  means  of 
learned  leisure — is  altogether  a  problem  which  it  is  much 
more  easy  to  state  than  to  solve. 

Nor  had  the  Reformers  only  to  watch  their  opportunity 
for  the  foundation  of  permanent  institutions  by  which  re- 
ligion might  be  then  and  for  ever  promoted;  but  whenever  a 
a  favourable  moment  was  afforded  for  putting  forth  sound  in- 
struction to  the  people,  they  had  to  sieze  upon  it.  During 
the  reign  of  Henry  this  could  only  be  done  by  being  instant 
in  season,  the  season  too  being  generally  short,  and  always 
precarious;  liable  to  be  affected  by  the  character  of  a  mar- 
riage, and  the  duration  of  it;  by  a  continental  treaty;  by  a 
vote  in  parliament  satisfactory  or  the  contrary;  in  short 
by  the  humour  of  a  prince  at  once  in  the  highest  degree  ca- 
pricious and  resolute.  Something,  however,  was  done; 
and  we  shall  now  gather  up  a  few  dropped  stitches  which 
we  have  intentionally  passed  in  this  chapter,  in  order  that 
our  subject  might  meet  with  no  interruption. 

The  vulgar  work  of  destruction  did  not  prevail;  even 
under  Henry,  to  the  total  exclusion  of  every  other.  In 
1536,  certain  articles  were  set  forth  by  the  convocation,  and 


THE  BIBLE  IN  CHURCHES.  181 

with  the  king's  authority,  which  had  for  their  title,  "  Articles 
devised  by  the  Kinge's  Highness'  Majestic  to  stablyshe 
Christen  quietnes,"  &;c.,  much  diversity  of  opinion  having 
sprung  up  in  the  country,  as  the  preamble  informs  us,  both 
upon  the  essentials  and  ceremonials  of  which  they  treat. 
They  are  ten  in  number,  and  rather  indicate  that  a  reforma- 
tion was  abroad,  than  that  it  was  achieved.  They  allow 
the  use  of  images,  but  endeavour  to  guard  against  their 
abuse;  sanction  prayers  to  the  saints,  but  with  a  caution 
against  superstition;  defend  the  doctrine  of  purgatory, 
though  with  some  hesitation,  and  with  a  positive  rejection 
of  pope's  pardons  and  masses  of  scala  coeli;  assert  the  sa- 
craments of  penance,  baptism,  and  the  Lord's  Supper; 
maintaining,  with  regard  to  the  two  latter,  that  infants  dying 
before  baptism  perish  everlastingly,  and  that  the  real  body 
and  blood  of  our  Lord  is  present  in  the  elements;  but  jus- 
tification on  the  ground  of  merit  they  disclaim  altogether, 
giving  to  Christ,  and  to  Him  only,  the  praise;  and  the  faith 
of  a  Christian  they  consider  to  be  comprehended  in  the 
canonical  Scriptures,  and  the  three  creeds  alone.  It  may 
be  well  to  observe,  inasmuch  as  the  observation  throws 
some  light  upon  the  spirit,  in  which  the  formularies  of  our 
church  were  conceived,  even  at  this  remote  period  of  the 
Reformation,  that  Melancthon  is  with  reason  believed  to 
have  had  a  voice  in  the  Articles  of  1536.  So  early  as  1534 
he  was  pressed  to  come  to  England  and  assist  in  completing 
the  regeneration  of  the  church;  and  invitations  to  the  like 
effect  continued  to  be  forwarded  to  him.  In  1535  we 
find  him  suggesting,  by  letter  to  Henry,  the  necessity  of 
issuing  a  simple  form  of  doctrine,  such  as  might  be  agreed 
upon  by  learned  men;  and  at  the  same  time  adding,  that 
Dr.  Barnes,  whom  he  calls  Antonius  (afterwards  the  martyr 
but  then  Henry's  ambassador  in  Germany,)  had  been  "  very 
carefully  discussing  with  him  certain  articles,  to  whom  he 
16 


182  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

had  given  his  opinion  upon  them  in  writing."  Certain  it  is 
that  in  the  very  next  year  these  of  King  Henry  came  out, 
and  that  the  definition  of  justification  contained  in  one  of 
them  is  a  translation  from  the  "  Loci  Theologici"  of  this 
Lutheran  reformer.* 

Nor  was  this  all:  the  measure  which  was  dealt  out  to 
the  degenerate  Jews  by  Antiochus  and  his  servants  had,  in 
a  lower  degree,  long  obtained  amongst  the  ecclesiastical 
powers  in  England.  "  When  they  had  rent  in  pieces  the 
book  of  the  law  which  they  found,  they  burnt  them  with  fire; 
and  wheresoever  was  found  with  any  the  book  of  the  testa- 
ment   the  command  was,  that  they  should  put  him 

to  death.  Thus  did  they  by  their  authority  unto  the  Israel- 
ites every  month,  to  as  many  as  they  found  in  their  cities. "t 
But  in  the  year  1537,  the  whole  Bible  translated  into  Eng- 
lish by  Tindall,  Rogers,  and  perhaps  by  Coverdale|  (the 
staple  of  all  future  editions,)  bearing,  however,  at  first  the 
title  of  Matthew's  Bible,  the  better  to  recommend  it,  Tindall 
having  recently  died  in  the  full  odour  of  heresy,  was  pub- 
lished in  England;  and  by  the  influence  of  Cranmer  and 
Cromwell,  the  king's  license  was  procured  that  it  should 
be  freely  bought  and  sold,  and  his  command  issued  that  a 
copy  of  it  should  be  set  up  in  every  church.  This  was  a 
day  of  rejoicing  to  the  Archbishop  Cranmer,  greater,  says 
he,  "  than  had  there  been  given  him  a  thousand  pounds. "§ 
Nor  to  him  only;  the  people,  long  thirsty  for  the  word,  now 
rushed  to  the  waters  of  life  and  drank  freely:  whosoever 
had  the  means  bought  the  volume;  where  the  cost  was  too 
great  for  an  individual,  neighbours  and  fellow-apprentices 

*  See  Arclibisliop  Laurence's  Bampton  Lectures,  Notes,  pp.  196-199. 
1 1  Mace.  i.  56.  5^.     Fox,  i.  682.  685.  772.  ii.  416.  Collier,  ii.  188. 
t  Sec  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  59,  and  Fox's  Ac'ts  and  Mon.  ii.  364. 
§  Strype,  p.  58. 


THE  bishop's  book.  183 

would  unite  purses  and  buy  in  common;  a  man  would  be 
seen  at  the  lower  end  of  his  church  on  a  Sunday  reading 
it  aloud,  whilst  numbers  flocked  about  him  to  listen  and 
learn;  and  the  one  great  topic  of  the  time  made  its  way 
even  into  taverns  and  alehouses,  where  it  seems  to  have 
been  often  the  subject  of  vehement  and  angry  debate.* 

The  same  year  was  distinguished  by  another  work,  cal- 
culated to  advance  the  Reformation  a  step  farther.  "  The 
Institution  of  a  Christian  Man,"  or  the  Bishops^  Book,  as 
it  was  called  in  popular  language,  from  the  quality  of  those 
who  were  chiefly  concerned  in  composing  it.  It  consists 
of  an  exposition  of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  the  Seven  Sacra- 
ments, the  Ten  Commandments,  the  Pater-noster,  the  Ave 
Maria;  to  which  are  annexed  the  two  articles  on  Justifica- 
and  Purgatory  (as  they  were  published  in  1536),  the  others 
having  been  inserted  in  the  body  of  the  work  under  their 
respective  heads.  The  mere  index  of  contents  is  enough 
to  show  that  much  still  remained  for  the  reformers  to  do; 
still  much  was  herein  done.  The  corruption  of  man  was 
strongly  asserted,  his  faculties  as  well  as  his  appetites,  his 
reason  no  less  than  his  will,t  contrary  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  schools,  which  had  limited  its  eflJ'ects  to  the  latter  and 
lower  half  of  our  nature;^  the  virtues  of  redemption  were 
consequently  vindicated,  and  were  placed  in  a  position  from 
which  the  dogma  of  merit  had  depressed  them.  The 
superstitious  attention  to  trifles  of  ceremonial,  whilst  the 
great  moral  duties  were  disregarded,  was  rebuked — the 
dread,  for  instance,  of  eating  an  egg  on  Friday,  as  contrast- 
ed with  the  indifference  felt  for  a  breach  of  the  most  funda- 


*  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  64;  and  Appendix,  42. 
t  Formularies  of  Faith  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.     Published  at 
the  Clarendon  Press,  1825.     P.  25.  34.  386. 

X  Archbishop  Laurence's  Bampton  Lectures,  p.  61-64. 


184  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

mental  laws  of  charity.*  The  dishonest  substitution,  in 
sermons,  of  fables  and  inventions  of  men,  for  the  Scriptures, 
was  reproved,  together  with  all  wilful  misrepresentation  of 
the  doctrines  contained  in  the  same. f  On  the  whole,  this 
was  the  culminating  point  of  the  Reformation,  during jthe 
reign  of  Henry:  henceforward,  that  is,  from  the  year  1538, 
with  few  intermissions,  it  ostensibly,  though  perhaps  not 
in  reality,  declined. I 

In  1543  another  work  appeared,  under  the  sanction  of  the 
king  and  the  convocation:§  it  had  for  its  titles,  "  A  Neces- 
sary Doctrine  and  Erudition  for  any  Christian  Man,"  and 
was  vulgarly  called  "  the  King's  ^ooA;."||  It  was,  in  fact, 
the  Bishops'  Book  revised,  with  some  additional  matter 
touching  free  will,  good  works,  justification,  predestination, 
purgatory — subjects  which  now  began  to  be  discussed  with 
great  warmth  and  difference  of  opinion.  On  comparing  it 
with  its  prototype,  it  will  be  seen  how  far  from  progres- 
sion the  Reformation  had  been  during  the  interval.  It  came 
out,  indeed,  whilst  the  act  of  the  Six  Articles  was  in  force, 
and  Gardiner  in  power.  The  wonder,  therefore,  is,  rather 
that  it  says  so  much,  than  that  it  does  not  say  more.     The 

*  Formularies,  &c.  p.  116.  t  Id.  p.  161. 

t  Cranmer's  correspondence  with  Cromwell,  on  the  subject  of  the 
Lutheran  envoys,  who  were  preparing  to  depart,  evidently  from  a 
feeling  that  the  purposes  for  which  they  were  invited  into  England 
were  all  thwarted  by  the  party  which  had  now  the  ascendency  at  court, 
shows  the  struggle  which  was  going  on  at  this  crisis,  and  how  it  was 
likely  to  end.     See  Burnet,  iii.  Rec.  48;  and  Todd's  Cranmer,  i.  250. 

§  Archbishop  Laurence,  p.  200.  Burnet  (Hist.  Reform,  i.  286,  and 
Supplement,  159,)  asserts  that  it  was  never  introduced  into  convoca- 
tion; but  here,  as  in  so  many  other  places,  he  is  mistaken. 

II  The  name  was  indeed  given  it  by  Gardiner;  who  thus,  under  the 
mask  of  a  compliment,  pledged  the  king  to  a  work  much  less  favoura- 
ble to  the  Reformation  than  the  Bishops'  Book.  See  Strype's  Cran- 
mer.  Appendix,  No.  xxxv. 


THE  KING  S  BOOK.  185 

truth,  however,  seems  to  be,  that  it  was  an  act  of  compro- 
mise; a  boon  granted  to  the  reformers  (rendered  equivocal, 
indeed,  by  an  infusion  into  it  of  the  spirit  of  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester),*  in  consideration  of  the  sacrifice  that  was 
about  to  be  required  of  them;  for  the  Bible  in  the  vulgar 
tongue  was  now  to  be  once  more  withdrawn.  To  those 
"  whose  office  it  was  to  teach  other,  the  having,  reading, 
and  studying  of  Holy  Scripture  (it  seems)  was  not  only 
convenient,  but  also  necessary;  but  for  the  other  part  of  the 
church  ordained  to  be  taught,  it  ought  to  be  deemed,  cer- 
tainly, that  the  reading  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  was 
not  so  necessary  for  all  those  folks."  For  them  it  was 
enough  to  hear;  and  that  nothing  might  be  wanting  to  con- 
vince. Scripture  itself  was  quoted  in  support  of  this  senti- 
ment— "  Blessed*  are  they  that  hear  the  word  of  God,  and 
keep  it;"  where  it  is  insinuated,  for  it  would  have  been  too 
bad  to  affirm  it,  that  the  blessing  attaches  to  those  who  hear, 
not  to  those  who  read.f  But  if  we  meet  with  a  stumbling- 
block  on  the  threshold  of  this  new  publication — for  the  pas- 
sages alluded  to  are  in  the  preface — on  further  acquaintance 
with  it  we  shall  find  our  suspicions,  that  Gardiner's  hand 
had  been  busy  in  it,  strengthened.  The  depravity  of  our 
nature,  so  stoutly  insisted  upon  in  the  Bishops'  Book,  is 
nearly  overlooked  in  the  parallel  passage  of  the  King's 
Book,:j:  and  the  good  offices  of  our  Lord  for  the  recovery  of 
man  are  set  forth  in  a  much  less  lively  manner  in  the  latter 
than  in  the  former  place;  where  the  one  has  enlarged  upon 
the  sufferings  of  Christ  chiefly  as  propitiatory,  the  other, 
though  not  disclaiming  this  consideration,  rather  descants 
upon  them  as  exemplary;§  whilst  the  one  declares  the  con- 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  100. 

t  See  Preface  to  the  "  Doctrine  and  Erudition,"  &c.  p.  218,219. 
j    t  Formularies,  &c,  comp.  p.  34  and  230. 
§  Comp.  p.  40.  42,  with  234,  235. 
16* 


186  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

demnation  of  every  man  to  be  sufficiently  established,  even 
though  he  were  to  be  tried  by  the  tenth  commandment  alone, 
the  other  evades  the  humiliating  confession;*  when  the  one 
denies  even  martyrdom  to  be  a  meritorious  cause  of  salva- 
tion, and  ascribes  it  altogether  to  the  grace  of  God  through 
Christ,  the  other  gives  a  difierent  turn  to  the  commentary, 
and  escapes  the  avowaht  in  the  one,  the  sacrament  of  mat- 
rimony is  explained  as  that  which  God  commands  to  some, 
leaves  free  to  all;  in  the  other,  a  clause  is  inserted,  excepting 
from  its  provisions  priests  and  others  under  vows  of  celi- 
bacy::}: in  the  one,  the  exposition  of  the  second  command- 
ment begins  thus — "  By  these  words  we  are  utterly  forbid- 
den to  make  or  to  have  any  similitude  or  image,  to  the  in- 
tent to  bow  down  to  it,  or  to  worship  it;"  in  the  other — 
*'  By  these  words  we  be  not  forbidden  to  make  or  to  have 
similitudes  or  images,  but  only  we  be  forbidden  to  make  or 
to  have  them  to  the  intent  to  do  godly  honour  unto  them,  as 
it  appeareth  in  the  xxvith  chapter  of  Leviticus. "§  It  is  true 
that  the  ulterior  interpretation  of  the  commandment  in  the 
two  cases  does  not  differ  so  materially  as  might  be  expected 
from  the  respective  introdi]ctions;  still  the  introductions  are 
sufficient  to  show  that  the  spirit  in  which  the  commentaries 
were  made  was  not,  in  both    instances,   quite  the    same. 
Other  examples  of  a  similar  declension  in  the  principles  of 
the  Reformation  might  be  gathered  from  a  close  comparison 
of  these  documents;  at  the  same  time,  it  would  afford  some 
minute  indications  that  a  belter  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures 
had  been  meanwhile  diffusing  itself  over  the  country,  and 
that  the  six  years  privilege  of  consulting  them  had  not  been 
altogether  lost.       Thus,  it  may  be  remarked,  that  in  the 
Bishops'  Book  we  read  of  "one  Pontius  Pilate  being  the 

*:Comp.  p.  172,  and  333.  t  Id.  p.  60,  and  252. 

t  Id.  p.  82,  et  scq.  and  p.  293.  §  Id.  p.  134,  and  299. 


THE  king's  book.  187 

chief  judge  in  Jerusalem;"*  whereas  in  the  King's  Book 
the  same  individual  is  called  "  Pontius  Pilate,"  &c.,t  as 
though  he  were  a  character  with  which  the  people  were 
more  famiUar:  again,  in  the  former,  the  legend  of  binding 
«'  Christ  fast  to  a  pillar,"  and  so  crowning  and  scourging 
him,  is  inserted  in  the  details  of  his  passion;:^  "^  the  latter, 
this  incident  is  omitted,  and  the  scriptural  account  is  strictly 
followed. §  It  is  singular,  too,  that,  in  the  one,  the  escape 
of  "Lot  and  his  three  daughters"  is  spoken  of;  a  mistake 
which  the  other  corrects,  his  "  tivo  daughters"  being  here 
the  reading. II 

In  addition  to  the  scanty  means  of  instruction  in  a  better 
faith  which  were  thus  extorted  from  the  king  in  his  last 
years  like  drops  of  blood,  he  was  prevailed  upon  by  Cran- 
mer  to  issue  orders  for  the  destruction  of  some  favourite 
images,  of  which  the  superstitious  abuse  was  the  most  noto- 
rious ^ — those  of  our  Lady  of  Walsingham,  our  Lady  of 
Ipswich,  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury,  and  St.  Ann  of  Bux- 
ton, being  the  chief;**  to  sanction  the  introduction  into  the 
churches  of  certain  prayers  or  suffrages — the  litany  which 
we  still  use,  except  that  some  objectionable  clauses  have 
been  since  omitted,  being  of  the  number;tt  and  to  permit, 
moreover,  the  use  of  occasional  prayers,  for  the  supply  of 
temporary  wants,  or  the  removal  of  temporary  calamities — 
for  rain  or  for  fair  weather — that  thus  the  hearts  of  the  con- 
gregation might  be  enlisted  in  their  devotions,  and  the  luke- 
warmness  be  counteracted,  which  was  fast  alienating  them 
from  public  worship,  conducted,  as  it  was,  in  a  language  of 

*  Formularies,  p.  38.  t  Id.  p.  233. 

Ud.p.39.  §Id.  p.  233. 

II  Comp.  pp.  162.  325. 

H  Strype's  Cranraer,  pp.  136.  128. 

**  See  Cranmer's  Catechism,  p.  23. 

ft  See  Mr.  Todd's  Life  of  Cranmer,  i.  354. 


188  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

which  they  were  ignorant,  though  with  errors  of  which  they 
were  aware. 

Meanwhile,  the  same  vigilant  prelate  supplied,  as  far  as 
he  had  the  opportunity,  the  livings  in  his  gift  with  men  de- 
voted to  the  cause  which  he  had  at  heart,  and  encouraged 
the  more  frequent  delivery  of  sermons;  whereby,  though 
much  violent  collision  of  doctrine  was  produced  amongst 
the  preachers,  still  sparks  of  truth  were  elicited,  and  light, 
though  not  without  heat,  was  dispersed.* 

Thus  stood  the  Reformation,  when  Henry,  who  had  now 
done  all  the  work  which  such  an  instrument  was  fit  for, 
died,  pressing  in  his  last  moments  the  hand  of  Cranmer,  to 
whom,  and  to  whom  only,  through  evil  report  and  through 
good  report,  he  had  ever  been  faithful  and  true.  To  him 
he  bequeathed  a  church  which  was  little  but  a  ruinous  heap; 
its  revenues  dissipated,  its  ministers  divided,  its  doctrines 
unsettled,  its  laws  obsolete,  impracticable,  and  unadapted 
to  the  great  change  it  had  sustained. 

It  remains  for  us  to  trace  the  re-construction  of  these  shat- 
tered materials — to  watch  the  wise  master-builders  as  they 
pursued  their  difficult  task  to  its  accomplishment;  and  be- 
holding the  pains,  the  perseverance,  the  study,  the  time 
which  it  cost  them,,  to  distrust  the  wild  suggestions  of  an 
age  of  crude  experiment  and  superficial  knowledge — an  age 
which  would  rush  in  without  knowing  why,  upon  forms 
and  institutions  which  the  sagest  heads  have  grown  gray 
in  devising  and  perfecting;  and  rather  listen,  as  far  as  re- 
gards our  church,  to  the  advice  of  the  ancient,  unpretending 
though  it  be — '*  Spartam  nactus  es,  banc  exorna." 

*  Strype,  p.  137. 


189 


CHAPTER  X. 

EDWARD    VI. ADVANCE    OF    THE    REFORMATION. ERASMUs's 

PARAPHRASE. HOMILIES. CRANMEr's     CATECHISM. OF- 
FICE    OF    COMMUNION. BOOK    OF    COMMON-PRAYER. TIME 

OF  SERVICE,  AND  LENGTH.— PRIMER. ARTICLES  OF  1553 

MODERATION  OF  THE  ENGLISH  REFORMERS. 

The  accession  of  Edward,  the  Josiali  of  his  country,  as 
he  was  commonly  called  in  his  own  day,  reanimated  the 
Reformation;  and  during  his  short  reign  it  was  that  the 
church  of  England  was  constructed,  in  the  main,  such  as 
we  now  see  it.  The  young  prince,  who  was  brought  up  a 
protestant,  was  himself  eminently  calculated  to  recommend 
the  cause.  His  own  character,  both  mental  and  moral,  was 
a  most  persuasive  advocate  of  the  system  which  had  nur- 
tured it.  Cardan,  who  was  called  into  England  to  pre- 
scribe for  the  Archbishop  of  St.  Andrews,  then  sick  of  a 
dropsy,  and  was  introduced  to  the  king,  now  in  his  fifteenth 
year,  relates  the  particulars  of  a  short  conversation  which 
he  had  with  him  on  the  subject  of  comets,  which  won  the 
heart  of  the  philosopher,  and,  like  a  journal  which  has 
come  down  to  us  written  in  his  own  hand,*  certainly  argues 
in  him  a  wit  beyond  his  age.  Latin  he  spoke,  says  Cardan, 
who  seems  to  have  conversed  with  him  in  it,  as  readily  as 
himself;  and  in  many  other  languages  he  is  said  to  have 
been  a  proficient,  stimulated,  perhaps,  by  an  apophthegm  of 
Roger  Ascham,  his  sister's  schoolmaster,  though  not  his 
own,  "  that  as  a  bird  cannot  soar  unto  heaven  with  one 
wing,    so  cannot  a  man  attain  unto  excellence   with  one 

*  Burnet,  Reform,  ii.  Append.  3. 


190  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

tongue."     Indeed,  to  a  study  of  tongues,  we  are  told  by  a 
correspondent  of  his  own,  he  had  more  applied  than  to  any 
matter  either  of  history  or  of  policy,  the  holy  Scriptures 
excepted;  nevertheless,  the  pains  which  were  taken  to  ren  j 
der  him  in  all  things  an  accomplished  prince  may  be  seen 
in  the  questions  (eighty-four  in  number)  submitted  to  him 
by  the  clerk  of  the  council,  probably  at  the   desire  of  the 
Protector  Somerset;  and  which  were  intended  as  food  for 
his  private  speculations  and  debates  with  his  friends.  They 
are  such  as.  embrace  nearly  all  those  principles  of  govern- 
ment upon  which  he  would  be  afterwards  called  to  act — 
"  Whether  is  better  for  the  commonwealth  that  the  power 
be  in  the  nobility  or  the  people?"     "  How  easily  a  weak 
prince  with  good  order  may  long  be  maintained;  and  Viow 
soon  a  mighty  prince  with  little  disorder  may  be  destroyed?" 
*'  What  causeth    an  inheritor   king  to   lose   his   realm?" 
"  Whether  religion,   besides  the  honour  of  God,  be  not 
also  the  greatest  stay  of  civil  order?"  "  How  dangerous  it  is 
to  be  the  author  of  a  new  matter?"* — with  many  other  pro- 
blems, well  worth  the  attention  of  those  to  whom  the  educa- 
tion of  a  sovereign  is  confided.     His  heart  was  as  good  as 
his  head;  and  as  it  is  with  the  latter  that  we  believe,  but 
with  the  former  that  we  believe  unto  righteousness,  so  did 
its  natural  dictates  rise  in  arms  against  those  more  subtle 
principles  according  to  which  Cranmer  had  conscientiously 
persuaded  himself,  and  endeavoured  to  persuade  the  king, 
that  the   death   of  Joan   of  Kent  was   a  duty;  and   happy 
would  it  have  been  for  the  memory  of  that  otherwise  almost 
unspotted  character,  had  he  submitted  his  more  mature  but 
more  sophisticated  judgment  to  the  righteous  tears  of  this 
gifted  boy.     What  he  did,  however,  he  did  ignorantly;  not 
in  any  carnal  zeal,  but  after  long  debate,  and  as  he  writes, 

*  Ellis's  Original  Letters,  ii.  187.    2d  Series. 


EDWARD  VI.  191 

in  bitterness  and  sorrow  of  spirit.*  He  did  it  in  the  temper 
in  which  Sir  Matthew  Hale  condemned  the'witches  of  Leo- 
stofF,  and  suffered  judgment  to  be  executed  upon  them; 
though  he  represents  himself  most  unaffectedly,  and  most 
truly,  as  having  in  general  such  tenderness  in  cases  of  life 
as  almost  disqualified  him  for  the  bench;  and  though  Sir 
Thomas  Brown,  who  actually  wrote  against  vulgar  errors, ' 
was  in  court  at  the  time,  and  influenced  by  his  voice  the 
verdict  of  the  jury.t  But  in  this  case,  Cranmer  seems  to 
have  thought  that  the  honour  of  Christ  himself,  which  was 
blasphemed,  required  an  example  to  be  made;  and,  weak 
and  wicked  as  it  is  now  allowed  to  be  to  condemn  to  the 
flames  for  matters  of  speculative  opinion,  which  do  not 
directly  interfere  with  the  morals  of  society,  and  therefore 
do  not  demand  the  interposition  of  the  secular  magistrate, 
it  was  the  dogma  of  the  church  in  which  Cranmer  had 
been  born  and  bred:  from  which  even  yet  he  had  not  wholly 
emancipated  himself;  but  to  which  Edward,  happily  for 
himself  and  his  country,  had  never  been  enslaved.  The 
case  of  Van  Paris  the  Dutchman  is  usually  coupled  with 
this  of  Joan  Bocher;  but  there  is  no  sufficient  proof  that 
Cranmer  was  here  a  party  actively  engaged,  or  that  any 
blame  is  due  to  him,  unless  it  be  that  he  did  not  intercede 
for  his  life.  It  is  singular,  and  characteristic  of  the  force 
of  early  prejudice,  that  in  the  touching  confession  which 
Cranmer  made  before  he  went  to  the  stake,  no  allusion  is 
found  to  the  case  of  this  poor  fanatic. 

Such  was  the  child  to  whose  hand  Providence  committed 
the  sceptre  of  England  for  a  short  season,  "  Ostendunt  terris 
hunc  tantum  fata;"  and  accordingly  the  church  had  rest  in 

*  '•  Cum  animi  amaritudine  et  cordis  dolore."     Burnet,  Rerorrn.  ii. 
168. 
t  Parr's  Works,  iv.  181. 


192  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

those  clays.  The  Roman  CathoHc  party,  which  had  so  ef- 
fectually clogged  the  wheels  of  the  Reformation  in  .the  latter 
years  of  Henry,  did  not  resign  their  power  without  a  strug- 
gle under  Edward.  From  amongst  the  guardians  of  the 
king,  who  were  also  to  be  the  governors  of  the  kingdom  du- 
ring the  minority,  the  Earl  of  Hertford,  afterwards  Uuke  of 
Somerset,  the  king's  maternal  uncle,  and  a  friend  of  the  Re- 
formation, was  chosen  head  of  the  regency,  under  the  title 
of  Protector;  whilst  Wriothesley,  the  lord  chancellor,  a  Ca- 
tholic, and  the  leader  of  his  sect,  who  opposed  the  elevation 
of  Somerset,  hoping  that,  if  all  the  members  were  equal  in 
authority,  the  substantial  power  would  be  his  own,  was  de- 
posed from  his  office,  and  deprived  of  the  seals.  Cranmer 
was  in  his  own  right,  as  primate,  a  member  of  this  commis- 
sion; and  finding  a  cordial  coadjutor  in  the  Protector,  he 
now  felt  himself  released  from  the  vexatious  restrictions 
which  had  hitherto  cramped  him,  and  began  for  the  first 
time  to  breathe  freely.  Now,  therefore,  his  plans  for  resto- 
ring the  national  church  rapidly  develope  themselves,  and 
to  the  consideration  of  these  our  attention  must  for  the  pre- 
sent be  directed. 

It  would  be  easy  to  take  a  more  extensive  sweep  of  con- 
temporary history,  as  others  liave  done,  and  to  adorn  our 
narrative  with  the  spoils — for  the  stirring  times  here  treat- 
ed of,  supply  abundant  materials  for  such  a  purpose;  but  it 
is  better,  perhaps,  to  follow  our  subject  closely  up,  putting 
aside  many  collateral  incidents,  not,  indeed,  as  without  their 
influence  on  the  Reformation,  but  as  holding  a  very  subor- 
dinate place  in  it;  and  thus  to  keep  our  eye  single,  neither 
distracting  it  by  too  much  diversity,  nor  perplexing  it  by 
too  much  detail.  For,  in  general,  the  most  profitable  me- 
thod of  treating  a  complicated  subject,  perhaps,  is,  not  to 
open  up  every  particular,  great  and  small,  which  may  bear 
upon  it  in  its  degree;  but  rather  to  filter  the  rush  of  matter 


ERASMUS  S  PARAPHRASE. HOMILIES.  193 

which  presents  itself,  and,  striving  to  make  a  small  book, 
which  is  a  hard  thing,  instead  of  a  large  one,  which  is  most 
easy,  to  place  the  reader  in  possession  of  such  events  only 
as  served  to  stamp  the  times  to  which  they  belonged,  or 
serve  now  to  characterise  them,  and  then  to  leave  him  to 
his  own  reflection  or  to  his  own  study  to  fill  up  the  picture. 
The  first  of  those  successive  publications,  by  the  circula- 
tion of  which  Cranmer  built  up  the  faith  of  his  country,  was 
Erasmuses  Paraphrase  of  the  New  Testament,  translated 
into  English,  a  copy  of  which,  as  well  as  of  the  Bible,  was 
to  be  set  up  in  every  parish  church;  the  next,  a  volume  of 
Homilies,  twelve  in  number.  The  paraphrase  Cranmer 
himself  did  not  maintain  to  be  perfect;  but  it  was  the  best 
upon  which  he  could  lay  his  hand;  moreover,  as  executed 
by  a  member  of  the  church  of  Rome,  (from  whose  eyes, 
however,  the  scales  were  fast  falhng.)  it  was  calculated,  he 
might  think  (and  an  expression  which  drops  from  him  con- 
firms this),*  for  a  church  in  a  state  of  transition  like  our 
own;  Gardiner  ofl^ered  many  captious  objections  to  it; 
others,  which  might  have  been  urged  with  more  show  of 
reason,  he  was  not,  perhaps,  the  man  to  discover  or  pro- 
pound. Had  he  compared  it  with  similar  writings  of  some 
other  of  the  reformers,  he  would  have  found  that,  in  making 
such  a  choice,  Cranmer,  so  far  from  intending  to  irritate, 
could  only  be  led  by  a  desire  to  conciliate  the  Catholics  as 
much  as  might  be  without  a  comprpmise.  Had  he  compared, 
for  instance,  Erasmus's  paraphrase  of  the  Galatians  with 
the  commentary  of  Luther  on  the  same  epistle- — had  he  con- 
trasted the  caution  of  the  one  interpreter  with  the  intrepidi- 
ty, not  to  say  hardihood,  of  the  other;  the  difl^erent  degrees 
of  animation  with  which  the  great  evangelical  doctrines,  and 
those  the  most  obnoxious  to  the  Roman   catholics,  are  re- 

*  Burnet,  ii.  37. 
17 


194  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

spectively  handled  by  them;  the  different  degrees  of  keen- 
ness they  discover  in  the  detection  of  those  doctrines  under 
the  same  texts;  the  more  or  less  reserved  sense  in  which  the 
works  of  the  law  are  understood  as  affecting  justification; 
not  to  speak  of  the  direct  fulminations  against  the  church  of 
Rome,  which  Luther  takes  every  occasion  to  launch,  and 
Erasmus  to  withhold; — if  he  had  thus  done,  probably  Lu- 
ther's most  powerful  treatise  would  not,  indeed,  have  made 
him  a  convert  to  his  opinions;  Cranmer  himself  most  like- 
ly would  have  disavowed,  or  at  least  tempered,  several  of 
them;  but  it  would  have  at  any  rate  satisfied  him  that  the 
archbishop  had  far  more  offensive  weapons  in  his  armoury 
than  those  which  he  thought  proper  on  this  occasion  to  pro- 
duce. 

The  objections  which  Gardiner  directed  against  the  Ho- 
milies were  many  of  them  just  enough  in  logic,  though  fee- 
ble in  themselves,  for  it  was  alleged,  that  the  doctrines  of 
the  Homilies  and  of  the  King's  Book  did  not  always  agree; 
nor  did  they:  but  this  only  served  to  show  (what  was  the 
-truth)  that,  when  the  latter  was  published,  Cranmer  was 
counteracted  by  other  influence;  or  else  (what  was  equally 
the  truth)  that  his  own  opinions  had  in  the  interval  under- 
gone considerable  revision.  Justification  by  faith  only,  a 
doctrine  which  in  the  King's  Book  had  been  greatly  quali- 
fied, is  made  a  leading  principle  in  the  Homilies;  and  certain 
superstitions  of  the  church  of  Rome,  which  in  the  former 
were  tolerated,  if  not  encouraged,  in  the  latter  were  abso- 
lutely forbidden.*  It  may  be  noticed,  in  passing,  that  on 
some  points,  as  on  that  of  human  corruption  for  instance,  a 
tone  of  greater  moderation  prevails  in  this  book  of  the  Ho- 
milies than  in  the  other,  which  appeared  in  1562,  prepared 

*  Compare  Honi.  on  Good  Works,  part  iii.   with  the  exposition  of 
the  second  commandment  in  the  "  Erudition,"  p.  299. 


HOMILIES.  195 

by  Queen  Elizabeth's  bishops,  principally,  it  has  been  said, 
by  Jewel.*  Such  a  volume  had  been  promised  in  an  adver- 
tisement affixed  to  the  former  one;  and  many  of  the  subjects 
actually  treated  in  it  are  there  enumerated,  though  not  all: 
but  the  composition,  it  should  seem,  was  reserved  for  those 
who  completed  the  Reformation.  In  neither  case,  however, 
can  the  several  Homilies  be  assigned  to  their  several  authors 
with  any  certainty.  At  the  same  time  in  the  first  volume 
(for  with  regard  to  the  second  no  single  Homily  of  them 
all  has  been  appropriated,)  there  is  reason  to  think  that  the 
one  on  "  salvation"  is  Cranmer's  own;  as  perhaps  those  on 
"  faith"  and  "  good  works;"t  and  internal  evidence  arising 
out  of  certain  homely  expressions,  and  peculiar  forms  of 
ejaculation,  the  like  to  which  occur  in  Latimer's  sermons, 
pretty  clearly  betrays  the  hand  of  the  Bishop  of  Worcester 
to  have  been  engaged  in  the  homily  against  "  brawling  and 
contention;"  the  one  against  "  adultery"  may  be  safely  giv- 
en to  Thomas  Becon,  one  of  Cranmer's  chaplains,  in  whose 
works,  published  in  1564,  it  is  still  to  be  found;  of  the  rest 
nothing  is  known  but  by  the  merest  conjecture.:):  On  the 
whole,  the  key  to  the  right  understanding  of  either  volume 
is  not  the  Calvinistic  controversy;  for  amongst  all  the  Ho- 
milies, as  Bishop  Burnet  observes,  there  are  none  relating 
to  the  divine  decrees§ — but  the  horror  of  papal  abuses, 
which  drove  the  compilers  into  some  hearty  expressions  in 
contradiction  to  them,  particularly  in  those  for  the  Nativity 
and  Whitsunday — expressions  which  would  rather  havere- 

*  Burnet  on  the  Articles,  Pref.  p.  iii. 

t  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  149. 

I  Eccles.  Biog.  iii.  505,  note,  and  Todd's  Cranmer,  ii.  10,  where  the 
authority  of  John  Woolton,  a  nephew  of  Dean  Nowell,  who  published 
in  1576,  is  quoted  for  ascribing  the  three  homilies  above  mentioned  to 
Cranmer. 

§  Burnet,  Reform,  ii.  26. 


196  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

commended  themseUes  to  the  honest  extravagance  of  a  La- 
timer than  to  the  caution  of  a  Cranmer,  and  which  have  ac- 
cordingly given  occasion  to  many  doubtful  disputations  both 
in  metaphysics  and  theology.  Still,  the  Homilies  must  \vdve 
been  most  wholesome  lessons  for  those  times,  when  minor 
differences  were  merged  in  the  broad  distinction  between 
Romanists  and  men  oi'  the  new  learning,  and  in  the  one  great 
struggle  for  the  liberties  temporal  and  spiritual  of  the  church 
of  England. 

Soon  after  this,  in  the  year  1548,  was  published  Cran- 
mer^s  Catechism^  as  it  was  called,  it  being  said  in  the  title- 
page  to  be  "  set  forth"  by  him;  a  circumstance  which  led 
Burnet  into  the  mistake,  subsequently  corrected  at  the  sug- 
gestion of  Strype,  that  it  was  composed  by  the  archbishop. 
The  truth  is,  that  it  was  originally  written  in  German,  and 
was  probably  one  of  the  many  catechisms  to  which  Lu- 
ther's own  gave  rise,  and  by  which  the  Reformation  in 
Germany  was  forwarded.  It  was  translated  into  Latin  by 
Justus  Jonas,  the  father  most  likely  (for  there  were  two), 
the  intimate  friend  of  Luther;  and  might  have  been  brought 
into  England  by  the  son,  a  less  conspicuous  character  among 
the  reformers,  who  came  to  this  country  in  1548,  driven 
from  his  home,  like  many  more,  by  the  religious  ordinance 
of  Charles  V.  known  by  the  name  of  the  Interim.  From 
the  Latin  it  was  turned  into  English,  faithfully  for  the  most 
part,  by  some  hand  of  Cranmer's  own  choosing,  perhaps 
by  Rowland  Taylor  the  martyr,  of  glorious  memory,  then 
one  of  his  chaplains.  It  is  drawn  up  on  the  same  plan  as 
the  Bishops'  Book  and  the  King's  Book,  which  had  pre- 
ceded it;  being  an  exposition  of  the  Creed,  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  and  the  Sacraments.  As  Cranmer  prefixed  to  the 
work  his  own  name,  it  must  be  considered  to  express  his 
own  opinions  at  the  time;  and  its  history  is  here  traced 
with  the  more  care,  because  it  presents  another  picture  of 


cranmer's  catechism.  197 

the  progressive  workings  of  his  mind  towards  the  point  at 
which  he  finally  reposed,  and  another  proof  of  the  slow  and 
painful  process  through  which  he  arrived  at  what  he  con- 
ceived to  be  the  truth.  Accordingly,  in  his  Catechism  we 
still  find  the  Commandments  arranged  after  the  Roman 
Catholic  usage,  the  second  omitted,  or  consolidated  with 
the  first,  and  the  tenth  divided  into  two.  We  find  three 
sacraments  still  insisted  upon,  though  four  others  had  been 
withdrawn — baptism,  the  bath  of  regeneration,  or  instrument 
of  the  second  birth;*  absolution,  or  the  authority  of  the  keys, 
by  virtue  of  which  pardon  is  obtained  for  sins  after  baptism; 
and  the  holy  communion,  which  administers  fresh  supplies 
of  grace  to  the  worthy  receiver,  and  enables  him  to  go  on 
from  strength  to  strength.  Of  the  first  of  these  three  sacra- 
ments it  may  be  remarked,  too,  that  the  language  is  more 
dogmatical  than  would  have  been  used  by  Cranmer  a  few 
years  later;  "  those  who  have  heathen  parents,  and  die 
without  baptism,"  being  said  to  be  "  damned  everlasting- 
ly;"t — a  phrase,  it  is  true,  merely  rendered  from  the  Latin; 
but  the  translation  exercises  on  some  other  occasions  a  dis- 
cretionary power  of  abridging;  and  whilst  the  former  re- 
jects the  church  of  Rome  as  a  church,  counting  it  to 
be  such  only  in  name,  and  classing  it  even  with  the 
Turks,!  the  latter  tempers  its  zeal  with  a  sounder  judgment, 
and  omits  altogether  so  suicidal  a  statement:  the  time  came 
when  Cranmer  would  have  left  these  infants  to  the  uncove- 
nanted  mercies  of  God,  saying  within  himself,  "  What  is 
that  to  thee?  Follow  thou  me."  Still,  this  is  characteristic 
of  the  several  stages  of  opinion  through  which  he  had  to 
pass.  A  similar  remark  applies  to  the  doctrine  of  the  holy 
communion,  as  here  explained.      It  is  clearly  that  of  the 

*  Cranmer's  Catechism,  pp.  182.  206.     Oxford,  1829. 
t  Cranmer's  Catechism,  p.  51.  t  Id.  p.  106. 

17* 


198  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

real  presence;  for  lliougli  a  distinction  has  been  taken  be- 
tween some  expressions  in  the  Latin  catechism  (which  cer- 
tainly inculcates  the  Lutheran  tenet),  and  the  corresponding 
phrases  in  the  English  translation,  as  though  the  former  as- 
serted the  body  and  blood  of  Christ  to  be  present  in  the 
sacrament,  the  latter  to  be  received  therein;  still  there  are 
many  places  where  such  a  distinction  does  not  obtain,  and 
where  the  argument  itself  does  not  seem  to  admit  of  it.* 
But,  after  all,  why  has  it  been  made  a  matter  of  reproach 
against  Cranmer,  that  he  was  first  a  Catholic,  then  a  Lu- 
theran, and  lastly  a  Zuinglian  in  his  notions  on  the  Com- 
munion; successively  a  believer  in  transubstantiation,  in  the 
real  and  in  the  spiritual  presence  of  the  body  and  blood  of 
Christ?  This  he  was:  for,  the  first  opinion  he  maintained 
when  he  argued  against  Lambert;t  the  second,  when  he  pub- 
lished his  Catechism;  the  last,  when  he  wrote  his  book 
upon  the  sacrament.  Gardiner  might  take  advantage  of 
such  changes,  as  in  fact  he  did,  and  have  his  sneer;  but 
nothing  could  be  more  natural  than  that  a  sincere  man,  only 
intent  on  following  out  truth,  lead  where  it  might,  should 
have  arrived  at  it  by  degrees,  and  by  precisely  such  degrees 
as  these — that  he  should  see  men  as  trees  walking,  before 
he  saw  them  as  men;  and  nothing  can  argue  more  strongly 
the  sound  and  sober  principles  upon  which  the  Reformation 
proceeded,  than  this  its  gradual  advance.  It  was  not,  we 
find,  without  patient  investigation,  and  the  successive  aban- 
donment of  every  false  position,  as  it  proved  itself  to  be 
such,  that  it  ultimately  attained  the  strong  ground  from 
which  it  has  never  since  been  dislodged. 

This  catechism  (it  may  be  remarked)  has  been  sometimes 
confounded  with  the  short  form  contained  in  our  Prayer 
Book.  The  latter,  however,  was  of  genuine  English  growth, 

*  Cranmer's  Catechism,  see  pp.  208.  210.  213.         t  Fox,  ii.  425. 


THE  SHORT  CATECHISM.  199 

though  of  doubtful  origin:  Strype  assigns  it  expressly  to 
Noweil;*  but  the  modern  biographer  of  the  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's  questions  his  title  to  it,  and  rather  gives  it  to  Poinet, 
afterwards  Bishop  of  Winchester.!  In  any  case,  Cranmer 
appears  to  have  reviewed  and  digested  it,  not  without  the 
able  co-operation  of  Ridley.:};  It  made  a  part  of  the  Liturgy 
of  King  Edward,  of  which  more  will  be  said  in  its  proper 
place,  being  inserted  in  the  Office  for  Confirmation.  Nor 
has  any  material  change  been  since  introduced  into  it,  ex- 
cept that  the  explanation  of  the  Sacraments  was  added  in 
the  reign  of  James  I.,  the  original  Catechism  having  ended 
with  the  Exposition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer. 

The  same  year,  1548,  came  out  another  work,  by  which 
the  cause  of  the  Reformation  was  still  more  essentially 
served,  and  the  structure  of  the  church  advanced,  the  Office 
of  the  Comviiumon.  It  was  compiled  chiefly  out  of  the 
Roman  missal,  of  which  it  is  often  a  literal  translation,  by 
"  sundry  of  his  Majesty's  most  grave  and  well-learned  pre- 
lates and  other  learned  men  in  the  Scriptures,"  and  in  its 
first  shape  retained  (so  it  was  afterwards  thought)  some  par- 
ticulars of  its  original,  which  would  have  been  better  modi- 
fied or  suppressed.  It  underwent  like  the  other  Offices  of 
which  more  will  be  said  presently,  a  rigid  revision  by 
Martyr  and  Bucer  before  its  re-appearance  in  1552,  for 
the  benefit  of  whose  remarks  the  whole  was  turned  into 
Latin  (so  pains-taking  were  the  founders  of  our  Church); 
and  prayer  for  the  dead,  the  invocation  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
upon  the  elements,  and  a  certain  bias,  or  what  might  have 
been  mistaken  for  such,  towards  the  real  presence,  were 
corrected,  but  with  a  delicate  hand  and  admirable  judgment 

*  Eccles.  Mem.  ii.  368. 

t  Churton's  Life  of  Dean  Noweil,  pp.  403.  407. 

\  Todd's  Life  of  Cranmer,  ii.  61. 


200  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

though  they  were  still  in  after-times  those  amongst  the  non- 
jurors who  maintained  that  the  changes  were  not  to  its 
advantage;  and  even  Laud,  it  has  been  observed,  in  the  com- 
position of  his  Liturgy  for  the  episcopalian  church  of  Scot- 
land, has  in  some  things  shown  a  preference  to  the  first 
over  the  amended  form.* 

Here  again  have  we  to  remark  and  admire  the  moderation 
of  the  Reformers:  they  did  not  unmannerly  reject  those  Of- 
fices of  the  Church  which,  however  corrupted,  lost  them- 
selves in  a  fathomless  abyss  of  years,  and  might  even  have 
partaken  of  something  of  the  spirit  of  an  apostolic  age;  for 
though  the  Clementine  liturgy,  to  which  the  Missal,  like 
many  other  liturgies  of  various  countries  and  dates,  owes 
many  of  its  elements,  is  found  in  a  work,  not  indeed  of  the 
antiquity  to  which  its  title  pretends,  the  Apostolical  Con- 
stitutions; still  it  is  a  work  of  very  great  antiquity,  perhaps 
antecedent  to  the  Council  of  Nice;  and  therefore  it  is  not  vi- 
sionary to  suppose  that  this  primitive  Office  contained  in  it 
breathes  the  language  of  very  early  times  indeed,  and  that 
some  of  the  prayers  which  for  tliree  centuries  of  persecution 
might  have  lived  rather  by  tradition  than  in  writing,  may 
be  here  more  or  less  faithfully  preserved.  These  helps 
which  our  Reformers  did  not  disdain,  they  showed  them- 
selves able  to  improve,  correcting  what  was  objectionable  in 
doctrine,  removing  what  was  ofTensive  in  taste,  and  often 
communicating  by  some  happy  expression  even  an  addition- 
al glow  of  devotion  to  passages  in  themselves  (it  might  have 
been  thought)  too  beautiful  to  touch;  for  in  the  whole  com- 
pass of  English  literature,  many  as  are  the  excellent  versions 
of  ancient  writings  which  it  can  boast,  it  would  be  in  vain 
to  look  for  any  specimens  of  translation  (merely  to   put  the 

*  On  this  subject  see  "  A  Collection  of  the  Principal  Liturgies,"  by 
Dr.  Thomas  Brett,  with  a  Dissertation  on  the  same,  p.  357. 


ADOPTION  OF  ANCIENT  LITl  RGIES.  201 

case  thus)  so  vigorous,  so  simple,  so  close,  and  yet  so  free 
from  all  constraint,  as  are  afforded  by  the  Offices  of  our 
Church.  An  example  taken  at  random  may  suffice  to  ac- 
quit us  of  all  charge  of  declamation.  It  shall  be  one  of  the 
Prefaces;  that  for  Easter.     Thus  it  runs  in  the  Missal:— 

"  Vere  dignuni  et  justum  est,  aequurn  et  salutare,  Te  qui- 
dem,  Domine,  omni  tempore,  sed  in  hoc  potissimiim  glori- 
osius  praedicare,  cum  Pascha  nostrum  immolatus  est  Chris- 
tus.  Ipse  enim  verus  est  Agnus,  qui  abstulit  peccata  mun- 
di;  qui  mortem  nostram  moriendo  destruxit,  et  vitam  resur- 
gendo  reparavit.  Et  ideo  cum  Angelis  et  Archangelis,  cum 
Thronis  et  Dominationibus,  cumque  omni  militia  ccelestis 
exercitus,  hymnum  gloriae  fuse  canimus,  sine  fine  dicentes, 
Sanctus,  Sanctus,  Sanctus,  Dominus  Deus  Sabaoth.  Pleni 
sunt  ccbH  et  terra  gloria  tua,  Hosanna  in  Excelsis.  Bene- 
dictus  qui  venit  in  nomine  Domini,  Hosanna  in  Excelsis." 

Let  any  man  attempt  to  express  this  sublime  appeal  to 
God  in  his  mother-tongue  for  himself,  and  then  he  will 
know  how  to  appreciate  the  ease  with  which  it  is  effected 
by  those  gifted  men,  to  the  worth  of  whose  labours  our  own 
generation  is  not,  perhaps,  sufficiently  alive,  in  the  follow- 
ing manner: — 

"  It  is  very  meet,  right,  and  our  bounden  duty,  that  we 
should,  at  all  times  and  in  all  places,  give  thanks  unto  thee, 
O  Lord,  Holy  Father,  Almighty  Everlasting  God.  But 
chiefly  are  we  bound  to  praise  thee  for  the  glorious  resur- 
rection of  thy  Son  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord;  for  he  is  the  very 
Paschal  Lamb  which  was  offered  for  us,  and  hath  taken 
away  the  sin  of  the  world;  who  by  his  death  hath  destroyed 
death,  and  by  his  rising  to  life  again  hath  restored  to  us 
everlasting  life.  Therefore  with  angels  and  archangels,  and 
with  all  the  company  of  heaven,  we  laud  and  magnify  thy 
glorious  name,  evermore   praising  thee,  and  saying.  Holy, 


202  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Holy,  Holy,  Lord  God  of  Hosts;  heaven  and  earthj]aie  full 
of  thy  glory:  glory  be  to  thee,  O  Lord,  most  High." 

Nothing  can  go  beyond  this,  unless  it  be  some  of  our 
Collects,  very  many  of  which  are  almost  literal  versions  of 
those  of  the  Missal;  and  were  more  wanted  for  occasional 
purposes;  and  possibly  some  might  be  added  to  our  Liturgy 
with  advantage;  more  might  be  found  in  this  same  exhaust- 
less  mine.  Here,  again;  let  us  to  the  testimony.  The  col- 
lect for  Palm  Sunday  is  this: — 

Omnipotens,  sempiterne  Deus,  qui  humano  generi  ad  im- 
itandum  humilitatis  exemplum,  Salvatorem  nostrum,  car- 
nem  sumere  et  crucem  subire  fecisti:  concede  propitius,  ut 
et  patientias  ipsius  habere  documenta,  et  resurrectionis  con- 
sortia mereamur  per  eundem  Dominum."  How  free,  yet 
how  faithful,  is  the  copy: — 

*'  Almighty,  everlasting  God,  who  of  thy  tender  love  to- 
wards mankind,  hast  sent  thy  Son  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ 
to  take  upon  him  our  flesh,  and  to  suffer  death  upon  the 
cross,  that  all  mankind  might  follow  the  example  of  his  great 
humility:  mercifully  grant  that  we  may  both  follow  the  ex- 
ample of  his  patience,  and  also  be  made  partakers  of  his 
resurrection,  through  the  same  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 

The  Office  of  the  Communion  though  soon  combined  with 
the  other  Offices,  appears  at  first  to  have  been  published  by 
itself,  and  before  any  other  service;*  it  being  important  to 
provide  a  substitute  for  the  Mass  with  as  little  delay  as  pos- 
sible. At  the  end  of  the  same  year,  however,  (1548)  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer  was  prepared,  and  submitted  to 
parliament;  and  in  1549  it  was  put  forth  by  authority,  and 
was  appointed  to  supersede  every  other  form.  It  was  drawn 
up  by  the  same  hands, f  and  upon  the  same  principles  as 

*  Fox,  ii.  659,  who  here  gives  the  dates  more  accurately  than  others, 
t  These  were  Goodrich,  Bishop  of  Ely;  Ridley,  of  Rochester;  Skyp, 


LITURGY  OF  COLOGNE.  203 

the  Office  of  the  Communion;  snd  as  the  Missal  had  been 
laid  under  contribution  for  the  latter  so  was  the  Breviary  for 
the  former,  and  the  ancient  Liturgies  for  both.  In  that  of 
Jerusalem,  of  St.  James  as  it  is  called,  and  of  which  the 
reader  may  find  the  substance  in  a  popular  form  in  the 
"  Devotions  of  Bishop  Andrews,"  many  of  the  elements  of 
our  own  beautiful  Liturgy  may  be  discovered;  and  the  vol- 
ume of  matter  which  our  earlier  church  prayers  in  general 
pour  forth,  as  compared  with  the  more  jejune  productions 
of  later  times,  may  be  in  a  great  measure  imputed  to  the  li- 
beral use  which  our  Reformers  made  of  the  devotions  of  ge- 
nerations gone  by,  and  to  that  modesty  which  was  content 
to  learn  from  the  spirits  of  just  men  now  made  perfect  how 
to  pray.  But  besides  these  more  ancient  sources,  from 
which  so  much  of  our  Prayer  Book  was  derived,  a  Liturgy 
recently  drawn  up  by  Melancthon  and  Bucer,  for  the  use  of 
the  archbishopric  of  Cologne,  supplied  many  other  hints. 
This,  however,  was  itself  no  effusion  of  the  moment,  but 
was  constructed  (as  might  have  been  expected  from  the 
scholarship  of  its  authors)  out  of  the  treasures  which  they 
found  in  the  devotional  forms  of  other  days.  Calvin  had, 
indeed,  produced  a  Liturgy  of  his  own,  preferring  to  be  the 
author  rather  than  the  compiler,  which  he  published  at  Ge- 
neva, as  the  form  of  that  church,  in  1545,  but  to  this  our 
Liturgy,  as  it  first  stood  in  1549,  does  not  bear  the  shghtest 

of  Hereford;  Thirlby,  of  Westminster;  Day,  of  Chichester;  Holbeach, 
of  Lincobi;  Dr.  May,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's;  Dr.  Taylor,  Dean  of  Lincoln; 
Dr.  Haynes,  Dean  of  Exeter;  Dr.  Redmayn,  Dean  of  Westminster; 
Dr.  Cox,  Almoner  to  the  King;  and  Dr.  Robertson,  Archdeacon  of 
Leicester,  But  the  chief  compilers,  besides  Cranmer,  were  probably 
Ridley  and  Goodrich.  In  the  committee  for  drawing  up  the  Commu- 
nion Office,  there  were  also  the  Archbishop  of  York,  the  Bishops  of 
Durham,  Worcester,  Norwich,  St.  Asaph,  Litchfield,  Salisbury,  Car- 
lisle, Bristol,  and  St.  David's. 


204  TvEFORMATION  IN    ENGLAND. 

resemblance.  Whilst,  however,  the  latter  was  under  revi- 
sion, previous  to  its  republication  in  1552,  and  in  the  hands 
of  those  foreign  divines  of  whom  mention  has  already  been 
made,  the  substance  of  Calvin's  work  was  printed  in  Lon- 
don by  Valerandus  Pollanus,  his  successor  at  Strasburg, 
then  a  refugee  in  England,  with  some  additions  of  his  own, 
and  this  (as  was  most  natural)  was  not  overlooked  by  men 
busily  engaged  in  a  similar  task,  and  did  probably  suggest 
the  introductory  sentences,  Exhortation,  Confession,  and 
Absolution,  which  were  then  for  the  first  lime  prefixed  to 
our  Daily  Prayer.  Nor  is  it  doubtful  that  to  the  appearance 
of  this  same  work  at  that  particular  moment  we  are  indebt- 
ed for  the  supplement  to  the  Communion  Service  of  the 
Ten  Commandments,  with  the  Responses,  the  latter  of 
which,  indeed,  are  very  nearly  translations  from  Pollanus. 
Still  the  temper  of  our  Reformers  is  shown  even  here,  and 
that  middle  way  observed  by  them,  which  often  constrains 
them  to  quit  the  guidance  of  these  foreign  theologians,  and 
speak  for  themselves.  Both  in  the  Confession  (and  parti- 
cularly that  in  the  Communion  Service)  and  in  the  Absolu- 
tion, which  was  taken  from  Pollanus  :ind  not  from  Calvin, 
who  did  not  adopt  any  form  of  the  kind,  extreme  expres- 
sions with  regard  to  human  depravity  to  be  met  with  in  the 
originals  are  studiously  suppressed  or  qualified  in  the  imita- 
tions, as  if  the  morbid  anatomy  of  our  nature  was  not  the 
theme  on  which  they  delighted  to  dwell,  satisfied  with  hav- 
ing at  least  trampled  under  foot  all  pretensions  of  merit  on 
man's  part,  and  with  having  vindicated  the  exclusive  claim 
of  our  Lord's  cross  and  passion  to  the  salvation  of  a  race  fall- 
en at  any  rate  from  a  pernicious  height.* 

The   time   of  day  at  which  the   offices  of    the  Prayer 
Book,  thus  completed,  were  performed,  is  not  easily  deter- 

*  Archbishop  Laurence's  Bampton  Lectures,  pp.  207.  289. 


TIME  OF  SERVICE.  205 

mined;  and  preremptorily  as  some  have  asserted  that  our 
morning-  service  for  Sundays  consists  of  three  entire  ser- 
vices intended  for  three  several  hours  of  prayer,  and  extra- 
vagantly long,  merely  owing  to  this  clumsy  consolidation  of 
them  all,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  prove  that  such  division 
did  ever  in  fact  obtain.  Two  services  probably  are  united: 
the  Morning  Prayer  strictly  so  called,  being  one;  the  Litany 
and  Communion  the  other; — but  that  the  two  latter  again 
were  ever  separated  seems  very  doubtful,  or,  indeed,  that 
the  first  continued  for  any  great  while  after  the  Reformation 
to  be  severed  from  the  rest.  That  such  was  the  case  origi- 
nally there  are  many  reasons  for  believing.  It  naturally 
succeeded  to  the  matins  of  the  Roman  Catholic  church,  as 
the  Litany  and  Communion  did  to^the  High-Mass^*  and  it 
would,  therefore,  be  very  likely  that  the  hours  in  either 
case  would  also  correspond.  Moreover,  in  all  the  early 
Common  Prayer  Books,  even  in  the  very  first,  there  is  a 
Rubric,  which  directs  such  as  intend  to  partake  of  the  Com- 
munion "  to  signify  their  names  to  the  curate  over  night,  or 
else  in  the  morning  before  the  beginning  of  Morning  Prayer 
or  immediately  afterr\  a  phrase  which  argues  some  inter- 
val between  the  two  services,  such  as  might  suffice  for  con- 
sidering the  qualifications  of  the  candidates,  and  for  pro- 
viding elements  proportioned  to  the  numbers  who  would 
attend.  Neither  is  there  wanting  some  internal  evidence  of 
the  Morning  Prayer  being  at  first  said  betimes — "  O  God, 
who  hast  safely  brought  us  to  the  beginning  of  this  day, 
defend  us  in  the  same,"  being  a  phrase  scarcely  pertinent 
to  any  other  prayers  than  orisons.^  On  the  contrary,  there 
are  reasons  still  more  satisfactory  for  thinking  that  the  Litany 

*  See  Burnet,  ii.  210.  t  Wheatly,  p.  267. 

I  The — day  of  September,  1559,  the  New  Morning  Prayers  began 
now  first  at  St.  Antholin's  in  Budgrow,  ringing-  ^ijive  in  the  morn- 
ing." — Strvpe's  Life  of  Grindal,  p.  27. 
18  " 


206  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

was  succeeded  by   the  Comrnunion  Service  without  any 
pause  whatever.     In  the  injunctions  of  King  Edward,  put 
forth  in  1547,  there  is  one  to  this  effect,  that  "  immediately 
before  High  Mass,  the  priests,  with  other  of  the  quire  shall 
kneel  in  the  midst  of  the  church,  and  sing  or  say  plainly 
and  distinctly  the  Litany  which  is  set  forth  in  English  with 
the  suffrages  following."*     There  is  every  reason  to  believe 
that  this  was  in  substance  the  Litany  still  in  use,  for  it  had 
already  appeared  in   Henry's   Primer;    but  however  that 
might  be,  the  union  which  it  exhibits  between  such  Litany 
whatever   it   was,    and    the    High  Mass,    prepares    us    to 
suppose    that   a   similar  arrangement  was  likely  to  ensue 
with   regard   to    the    same    or  any  new    Litany  and    the 
Communion  Service.     And  that  such  did  ensue  is   made 
still  more  manifest   by  the    injunctions  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth in  the  first  year  of  her  reign;  in  one   of  which   the 
very   same   clause    again    occurs  word    for  word,    except 
that  for  "  High  Mass"  there  is  actually  substituted  "  the 
time  of  communion  of  the  sacrament.-\     Indeed  the  Com- 
munion Service  could  scarcely  fail  of  being  annexed  to  the 
Litawy,  since  it  soon  came   to  pass   that   the  former   was 
seldom  read  throughout,  the  sacrament  ceasing  to  be  admi- 
nistered weekly,  as  was  at  first  contemplated,  and  recurring 
at  least  in  country  churches,  as  at  present  only  five  or  six 
times  a  year.j:     Nor  is  this  all:  in  the  first  Common  Prayer 
Book  of  Edward  VL  it  was  ordered,  that  "  upon  Wednes- 
days and  Fridays,  though  there  were  none  to  communicate 
with  the   priest,  yet,  after  the  Litany  ended,  the  priest 
should  put  upon  him  a  plain  alb  or  surplice  with  a  cope,  and 
say  all  things  at  the  altar  appointed  to  be  said  at  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  Lord's  Supper  until  after  the  offertory."    Whence 
it  is  clear,  that  when  there   were  persons  to  communicate 

*  Bp.  Sparrow's  Collections,  p.  8.         t  Ibid.  p.  72. 
t  Herbert's  Country  Parson,  p.  76. 


TWO  SERVICES  UNITED.  207 

(which  the  rubric  seems  to  presume  would  always  be  the 
case  on  Sundays,)  the  Litany  and  Communion  service  went 
together;  and  that  when  there  were  none  such,  still  the 
Litany  was  immediately  followed  by  the  Communion  Ser- 
vice as  far  as  to  the  end  of  the  prayer  for  the  whole  state 
of  Christ's  church  militant.  How  long-  this  arrangement 
continued  does  not  appear;  but  whether  from  the  difficulty 
of  gathering  together  a  congregation  at  break  of  day,  disci- 
pline being  now  relaxed,  or  from  whatever  other  cause, 
within  the  first  century  after  the  Reformation  the  Church 
seems  to  have  lapsed  into  the  present  practice,  and  to  have 
combined  its  services  into  one.  Bishop  Hall  in  his  contem- 
plations makes  the  incident  mentioned  in  the  first  Book  of 
Samuel — that  "  they  of  Ashdod  arose  early  on  the  morrow 
to  visit  Dagon — a  vehicle  for  reproof  of  the  lukewarmness 
of  his  own  times,  saying,  "  The  morning  is  fittest  for  devo- 
tion; then  do  the  Philistines  flock  to  the  temple  of  their 
god;"  and  adding,  "  what  a  shame  it  \s,for  us  to  come  late 
to  oursV*  as  though  in  his  day,  and  he  died  in  1656,  at  the 
age  of  eighty-two,  there  were  generally  matins  no  longer. 
And  Herbert,  in  describing  categorically  the  Sunday  duties 
of  his  Country  Parson,  expresses  himself  to  the  same  effect: 
— "  Having  read  divine  service,"  says  he^  '^  twice  fully, 
and  preached  in  the  morning  and  catechised  in  the  afternoon, 
he  thinks  he  hath,  in  some  measure,  according  to  poor  and 
frail  man,  discharged  the  public  duties  of  the  congregation."! 
The  length  of  our  church  service,  therefore,  of  which 
we  now  hear  so  much,  and  the  repetitions  it  contains,  are 
evils,  if  evils  they  be,  which  have  been  practically  existing 
almost  from  its  first  formation;  which  a  Hammond,  a 
Sanderson,  and  a  Taylor  could  tolerate  without  a  complaint 
but  too  happy;  (as  were  then   their  congregations  also,  for 

*  Contempl.  lib.  xii.  t  Country  Parson,  p.  25. 


208  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

those  were  not  fastidious  days,)  if  they  were  permitted  in 
their  secret  assemblies  to  give  utterance  to  these  burning 
words  with  which  the  great  Reformers  had  furnished  them; 
nor  scrupulously  counting  how  often  they  were  taught  to 
pour  forth  the  Lord's  Prayer;  as  they  counted  not  how  often 
they  were  taught  to  cry  out  in  the  self-same  phrase  for  the 
Lord  to  have  mercy  upon  them;  as  David  counted  not  how 
often  he  exclaimed  "  My  son,  my  son;"  or  as  these  critics 
themselves,  it  is  presumed,  would  not  count  their  own  ite- 
rations when  they  were  suing  earnestly  for  their  lives. 
Such  are  not  vain  repetitions;  and  it  is  to  be  hoped,  that  an 
age  so  little  fitted  for  the  task  as  this  by  any  theological  at- 
tainments, will  pause  before  it  attempts  to  improve  upon 
the  labours  of  a  Cranmer,  who,  according  to  the  testimony 
of  one  of  the  ripest  scholars  of  his  time,  Peter  Martyr,  nor 
he,  by  any  means  a  creature  of  the  archbishop,  "  had  dili- 
gently noted  with  his  own  hand  every  one  of  the  fathers; 
had  digested  into  particular  chapters,  with  a  view  to  the 
controversies  of  his  day,  councils,  canons,  and  popes'  de- 
crees pertaining  thereto,  with  a  toil,  and  diligence,  and  ex- 
actness, which  would  seem  incredible  to  any  but  an  eye- 
witness; who  both  publicly  and  privately,  and  by  a  marvel- 
lous strength  of  learning,  quickness  of  wit,  and  dexterity 
of  management,  had  asserted  what  he  held  to  be  true  from 
the  thorny  and  intricate  cavils  of  sophisters;"*  and  who 
pronounced  concerning  this  very  Book  of  Common  Prayer, 
"  that  no  man  could  mislike  that  godly  book  that  had  any 
godliness  in  him  joined  with  knowledge:"! — Moreover  that 
an  age,  which  for  a  long  time,  unchastened  by  any  national 
calamity,  has  suffered  much  of  that  spirit  of  devotion  to 
escape  which  animated  the  holy  men  of  old,  who  were  ever 
compelled  to  walk  with  their  lives  in  their  hand,  and  who 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  27.  t  Strype's  Annals,  p.  87  . 


THE  PRIMER.  209 

were,  in  fact,  called  upon  at  length  to  lay  them  down,  will 
not  be  allowed  to  communicate  its  narcotic  influence  to  our 
Liturgy,  and  quench  in  any  degree  the  ashes  of  the  martyrs. 
In  truth,  it  is  impossible  to  contemplate  the  projects  of  our 
Liturgical  Reformers  without  something  of  alarm,  lest, 
whilst  with  the  best  intentions  in  the  world  they  "  dandle 
the  kid,"  they  should  clumsily  kill  him  nevertheless. 

If,  however,  changes  tliere  must  be  after  all — if  old  things 
must  here,  too,  pass  away,  and  all  things  become  new — be 
the  conditions  those  proposed  by  the  sagacious  South,  and 
all  apprehensions  will  be  hushed.  "  Let  us  but  have  our 
Liturgy  continued  to  us,  as  it  is,  till  the  persons  are  born 
who  shall  be  able  to  mend  it,  or  make  a  better;  and  we  de- 
sire no  greater  security  against  either  the  altering  this,  or 
introducing  another."* 

Besides  providing  these  various  forms  of  public  devotion, 
our  Reformers  extended  their  care  to  those  of  the  closet  and 
household;  and  in  "  The  Primer,  or  Book  of  Private  Prayer, 
needful  to  be  used  of  all  Christians"  (for  so  its  title  runs), 
and  of  which  numerous  editions  appeared  from  the  dawn  of 
the  Reformation  under  Henry  down  to  the  accession  of  Mary, 
successively  portraying  its  progress  by  their  improvements 
upon  one  another,  scriptural  petitions  are  contained  suitable 
to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and  almost  to  every  stale 
of  body  or  mind  to  which  they  are  liable.  Here  are  graces 
before  meat — addresses  to  God  "  both  when  we  wake  and 
when  we  seek  his  gift  of  sleep;" — when  we  are  "  very 
sick,"  and  when  our  health  is  recovered — for  such  as  have 
an  unquiet  conscience,  or  an  injured  name — for  such  as  are 
in  poverty  or  affluence — for  kings  and  judges,  gentlemen 
and  merchants,  lawyers  and  labourers,  parents  and  children, 

*  Epistle' Dedicatory  to  the  University  of  Oxford,  prefixed  to  vol.  vii. 
of  his  sermons,  ed.  1722.  8vo. 

18* 


210  REFORMATION  IN    ENGLAND. 

husbands  and  wives,  masters  and  servants — significant  all, 
of  the  manner  in  which  the  Reformers  laboured  to  introduce 
a  rehgious  principle  into  all  the  relations  and  transactions 
of  life  whatsoever;  to  extend  its  influence  over  the  whole  of 
society,  so  that  like  Elisha  stretched  upon  the  dead  child 
(to  use  an  illustration  of  Jeremy  Taylor's),  it  might  give 
life  and  animation  to  every  part  of  the  body  politic.  There 
is  mueh  simplicity  and  beauty  in  the  following  prayers  "  for 
Landlords,"  and  "  for  Householders,"  which  are  extracted 
as  specimens  of  a  work  now  but  little  known,  having  been 
overlaid  by  the  extempore  effusions  of  the  days  of  Cromwell, 
and  never  having  recovered  itself,  like  the  Book  of  Com- 
mon Prayer,  since. — * 

"  FOR  LANDLORDS. 

"  The  earth  is  thine,  O  Lord,  and  all  that  is  contained 
therein,  notwithstanding  thou  hast  given  the  possession 
thereof  to  the  children  of  men,  to  pass  over  the  time  of 
their  short  pilgrimage  in  this  vale  of  misery.  We  heartily 
pray  thee  to  send  thy  Holy  Spirit  into  the  hearts  of  them 
that  possess  the  grounds,  pastures,  and  dwelling-places  of 
the  earth;  that  they,  remembering  themselves  to  be  thy  ten- 

*  They  are  here  given  from  a  reprint  of  the  last  Primer  of  Edward 
VI.,  by  the  Rev.  H.  Walter. — King  Henry's  Primer,  printed  by  Graf- 
ton in  1546,  though  containing  some  prayers  of  a  more  private  nature, 
is  in  general  an  abridged  translation  of  the  Breviary;  intended  for  the 
use  of  a  congregation,  (see  Sparrow's  Collection,  p.  11.)  and  furnished 
with  a  Litany  nearly  the  same  as  that  in  our  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 
These  publications,  therefore,  though  bearing  the  same  name  of  Pri- 
mer,  (which,  indeed,  seems  to  have  been  applied  to  many  forms  of 
devotion  published  in  those  times,)  are,  in  themselves,  very  different 
works.  Probably  the  Prayer  Book  having  been  put  forth  in  the  in- 
terval superseded  all  other  public  forms,  and  thenceforward  the  Primer 
was  adapted  to  the  use  of  the  closet  only. 


THE  ARTICLES.  211 

ants,  may  not  rack  and  stretch  out  the  rents  of  their  houses 
and  lands;  nor  yet  take  unreasonable  fines  and  incomes;  af- 
ter the  manner  of  covetous  worldlings;  but  so  let  them  out 
to  other,  that  the  inhabitants  thereof  may  be  able  both  to 
pay  the  rents,  and  also  honestly  to  live  to  nourish  their 
family,  and  to  relieve  the  poor.  Give  them  grace  also  to 
consider  that  they  are  but  strangers  and  pilgrims  in  this 
world,  having  here  no  dwelling-place,  but  seeking  one  to 
come;  that  they,  remembering  the  short  continuance  of  their 
life,  may  be  content  with  that  is  suihcient,  and  not  join 
house  to  house,  nor  couple  land  to  land,  to  tlie  impoverish- 
ment of  others;  but  so  behave  themselves  in  letting  out  their 
tenements,  lands,  and  pastures,  that  after  this  life  they  may 
be  received  into  everlasting  dwelling-places  through  Jesus 
Christ  our  Lord." 


"  FOR    HOUSEHOLDERS. 

"  To  have  children  and  servants  is  thy  blessing,  O  Lord! 
but  not  to  order  them  according  to  thy  word  deserveth  thy 
dreadful  curse;  grant,  therefore,  that  as  thou  hast  blessed 
me  with  an  household,  so  I  may  diligently  watch,  that 
nothing  may  be  committed  of  the  same  that  may  offend  thy 
fatherly  goodness,  and  be  an  occasion  of  turning  thy  bless- 
ing into  a  curse;  but  that  so  many  as  thou  hast  committed 
to  my  charge  may  eschew  all  vice;  embrace  all  virtue;  live 
in  thy  fear;  call  upon  thy  holy  name;  learn  thy  blessed 
commandments;  hear  thy  holy  word;  and  avoiding  idleness, 
diligently  exercise  themselves  every  one  in  his  office,  ac- 
cording to  their  vocation  and  calling,  unto  the  glory  of  thy 
most  honourable  name." 

Thus  far  have  we  accompanied  our  Reformers  in  their  at- 
tempt to  raise  up  a  Church  of  England,  and  to  establish  its 
doctrines.     One  important  work  more  under  this  head  re- 


212  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

mained  still  to  be  done,  and  to  that  we  must  now  advert, 
the  composition  of  a  set  of  »Brticles  which  should  speak 
with  authority  the  opinions  of  the  church,  and  secure  unifor- 
mity amongst  its  teachers.  Cranmer  had  entertained  this 
difficult  project  in  his  thoughts  long  before  he  executed  it; 
and  the  spirit  in  which  he  buckled  himself  to  the  work  may 
be  collected  from  some  demonstrations  which  he  had  previ- 
ously made.  The  natural  effect  of  the  Reformation  had 
been  to  put  in  motion  various  conflicting  opinions  upon  mat- 
ters of  faith  and  practice;  every  man  challenging  to  himself 
the  right  of  private  judgment,  and  many,  no  doubt,  abusing 
it;  for  any  principle,  however  good,  may  be  misapplied.  It 
was,  accordingly,  the  devout  wish  of  many  of  the  leading 
Reformers,  both  on  the  Continent  and  in  this  country,  that 
some  general  creed  should  be  drawn  up  by  a  congress  of 
learned  men  of  all  nations,  which  should  bind  the  whole 
Protestant  church  together,  and  put  an  end  to  these  mischie- 
vous divisions  of  heart.  Melancthon  appears  especially  to 
have  pressed  such  a  scheme  upon  Cranmer,  whom,  in  his 
turn,  he  found  nothing  loth  to  pursue  it;*  for  he  seems  to 
have  entered  into  a  correspondence  on  the  subject  with  some 
of  the  leading  foreign  Protestants;  and  Calvin's  own  letters 
(for  to  him  he  had  written  amongst  others)  bear  testimony 
to  the  comprehensive  views  of  our  archbishop  upon  this 
great  question.!  It  failed,  however,  as  the  same  correspon- 
dence indicates;  whether  from  the  troubles  at  that  time  pre- 
vailing both  at  home  and  abroad;  whether  from  the  difficulty 
which  must  have  been  anticipated  of  constructing  any  single 
form  which  should  be  acceptable  to  so  many  parties  holding 
so  many  opinions;  or  whether  from  the  intrigues  of  the 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  410.     Archbishop  Laurence,  Bampton  Lec- 
tures, p.  37. 

t  Bampton  Lectures,  Notes,  p.  233. 


SPIRIT  OF  THE  ARIICLES.  213 

Council  of  Trent,  then  sitting,  which,  taking  alarm  at  the  pro- 
jected unanimity  of  their  adversaries,  and  acting  upon  the 
old  policy  of  divide  and  conquer,  despatched  their  emissa- 
ries to  the  proper  quarters,  who,  feigning  themselves  zealous 
for  the  Reformation,  and  preaching  those  extravagant  doc- 
trines of  the  Anabaptists,  which  all  sober-minded  men  la- 
mented and  condemned,  scattered  apples  of  discord  amongst 
their  enemies,  and  dissolved  them  as  a  body.*  But,  how- 
ever this  might  be,  the  scheme  was  discovered  to  be  im- 
practicable, and  Cranmer  then  contracted  his  views,  and 
confined  himself  to  the  preparation  of  Articles  for  the  Church 
of  England  only.f 

It  is  of  great  importance  to  the  right  understanding  of 
those  which  he  at  length  drew  up,  to  consider  the  spirit  in 
which  they  were  framed.  Originating  in  the  manner  we 
have  said,  the  principle  which  dictated  them  could  scarcely 
have  been  one  of  exclusion,  but  was  rather  intended  to  al- 
low a  latitude,  within  certain  limits  to  a  conscientious  dif- 
ference of  opinion,  and  to  make  the  fiery  scorpion  of  bigot- 
ry draw  in  its  claws;  and  concede  a  just  portion  of  the  hea- 
vens to  other  pretensions  besides  its  own.  That  the  spirit 
of  our  Articles  was  thus  catholic,  became  apparent  in  the 
actual  working  of  them;  and  accordingly,  when  the  exclu- 
sive doctrines  of  Calvin  triumphed  for  a  season  in  this  coun- 
try, and  the  Westminster  divines  were  called  upon  to  remo- 
del the  church,  one  of  their  first  acts  was  to  review  the  Arti- 
cles, (a  task  which  they  did  not  complete,  probably  finding 
it  a  business  of  too  much  moderation  to  suit  tlieir  present 
temper,)  with  the  express  design  of  rendering  them  "  more 
determinate  in  favour  of  Calvinism^,"  and  a  similar  attack 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  pp.  207,  208. 
t  Bampton  Lectures,  p.  233, 

t  Neal's  Hist,  of  the  Puritans,  iii.  55.,  and  Append,  n.  7.  where  the 
amended  articles  may  be  seen. 


214  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

appears  to  have  been  meditated  upon  them  by  the  same  par- 
ty at  the  Savoy  conference  after  the  Restoration;*  sufficient 
testimonies  these,  that  the  exclusionists  did,  in  fact,  feel  the 
Articles  (however  they  may  have  laid  violent  claim  to  them 
as  their  own)  to  be  conceived  in  a  temper  inconveniently  li- 
beral, and  the  net  of  Cranmer  and  his  coadjutors  to  have 
been  cast,  in  this  instance,  too  wide  to  meet  their  approba- 
tion. 

Nor  will  a  closer  examination  of  the  history  of  their  ac- 
tual composition  lead  to  any  other  result.  For  the  model 
upon  which  those  of  Cranmer  of  15^3  were  formed  was  the 
Confession  of  Augsburg,  which  was  strictly  a  Lutheran 
Confession,  Melancihon  himself  having  drawn  it  up;  and  it 
is  a  curious  fact,  and  like  another  to  which  allusion  has  al- 
ready been  made  (the  frequent  invitations  sent  to  this  great 
Reformer  to  repair  to  England  and  take  part  in  building  up 
her  church),  a  fact  indicating  the  influence  which  his  cha- 
racter and  opinions  exercised  on  the  ecclesiastical  proceed- 
ings of  this  country  at  that  time,  that  the  divinity  professor- 
ship in  Cambridge,  which  was  vacated  by  Bucer's  death,  in 
1551,  was  not  filled  up  for  two  years,  apparently  in  the  hope 
that  Melancthon  (for  whom  it  was  intended)  would  be  per- 
suaded to  come  over  and  occupy  it;t  the  interval  being  pre- 
cisely that  in  which  the  Articles  were  concocted.  Nor  may 
it  be  impertinent  to  remark,  that  on  tlieir  revision  under 
Archbishop  Parker,  previous  to  1562,  care  was  taken  to 
draw  from  the  same,  or  at  least  a  similar,  fountain  for  what 
was  wanting;  the  additions  and  emendations  bearing  token, 
both  in  their  matter  and  language,  of  having  been  derived 
from  the  Confession  of  Wirtemberg;  a  Confession  composed 
in  1551,  and  exhibited  at  the  Council  of  Trent  the  following 

*  Neal's  Hist,  of  the  Puritans,  iv.  p.  298. 
t  Bampton  Lect.  p.  234. 


SPIRIT  OF  THE  ARTICLES.  215 

year,  and  which,  like  that  of  Augsburg,  was  not  Calvinis- 
tic,  nor  Zuinglian,  but  Lutheran.*  Indeed,  nothing  can  be 
more  erroneous  than  to  measure  the  contemporary  by  the 
posthumous  influence  of  a  great  name.  Milton  is  not  men- 
tioned by  Lord  Clarendon  (who  forgets  nobody  that  stamped 
his  own  times),  nor  yetby  Baxter,  whose  writings  are  volu- 
minous, and  by  whom  it  was  to  be  expected  that  he  would  be 
had  in  honour.  And  in  like  manner,  splendid  as  eventual- 
ly became  the  fame  of  Calvin,  it  was  comparatively  incon- 
siderable when  our  church  was  in  building,  being  eclipsed 
by  the  burning  and  shining  light  of  Luther's  name;  so  that 
whilst  a  sermon  of  the  latter  is  advertised  in  England  in 
1547,  as  a  work  "  of  the  famous  clerk  oi  luorthy  memory. 
Dr.  Martin  Luther,"  a  treatise  of  Calvin  is  sent  forth  in 
1549  (two  years  later),  as  "  written  by  Master  John  Calvin, 
a  man  of  right' excellent  learning  and  no  less  conversation,'^ 
as  though  his  fame  as  yet  required  the  help  of  a  herald;! 
neither,  it  may  be  observed,  does  the  term  Calvinist  find  a 
place  in  the  pages  of  Fox.  And  though  a  body  of  men  there 
was  in  the  times  of  our  first  Reformers,  and  by  them  cer- 
tainly accounted  schismatics,  to  whom  the  name  of  Free- 
Tfillers  was  given,  (and  a  singular  instance  of  the  predomi- 
nance of  the  intellectual  over  the  mere  animal  part  of  our 
nature  it  is,  that  the  metaphysical  questions  to  which  the 
name  points  should  have  disturbed  the  prison-house  of  per- 
sons who  were  about  to  die,  perhaps,  on  the  morrow,  at  the 
stake|,)  still  the  tenets  of  these  men  were  not  such  as  were 
afterwards  called  Arminian,  but  were  stricily  Pelagian,  being 
in   gross  disparagement  of  a  Redeemer's   merits,  and  of  a 

*  Bampton  Loct.  pp.  45.240. 

t  See  Bampton  Lcct.  p.  243.     Strypc's  Ecclcs.  Mem.  ii.  28. 

t  Strype's  Cranmer.  p.  350. 


216  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Sanctifier's  help,  and  as  such  were  stoutly  combated  by  the 
founders  of  our  Church.*  That  the  freedom  of  the  will  was 
not,  in  itself,  a  doctrine  offensive  to  Cranmer,  but  the  con- 
trary, is  certain;  and  in  a  Letter  to  Cromwell,  recently  pub- 
lishedt  from  an  original  manuscript  in  the  Chapter-house  at 
Westminster,  the  Archbishop,  speaking  of  the  seditious  con- 
duct of  one  Sir  Thomas  Baschurch,  a  priest,  writes,  "  At 
April  next  coming  it  shall  be  three  years  since  the  said  Sir 
Thomas  fell  into  despair,  and  thereby  into  a  sickness,  so 
that  he  was  in  peril  of  death.  Of  this  sickness,  within  a 
quarter  of  a  year  after,  he  recovered,  butsaith  he  is  assured 
that  he  shall  be  perpetually  damned.  My  chaplains  and 
divers  other  learned  men  have  reasoned  with  him,  but  no 
man  can  bring  him  to  other  opinion  but  that  he,  like  unto 
Esau,  was  created  unto  damnation;  and  hath,  divers  times 
and  sundry  ways,  attempted  to  kill  himself;  but  by  diligent 
looking  unto  he  hath  hitherto  been  preserved." 

Moreover,  the  selection  which  Cranmer  made  of  Eras- 
mus's Paraphrase,  as  the  exposition  of  Scripture  of  which 
every  church  was  to  have  a  copy,  argues  no  Calvinistic 
prejudices,  but  the  very  reverse. 

The  true  key,  indeed,  to  the  right  understanding  of  the 
articles  (as  was  already  observed  with  regard  to  the  homi- 
lies) is  not  so  much  the  doctrine  of  Calvin  as  of  the  school- 
men; the  controversy  lying  chiefly  between  the  Protestant 
and  Catholic,  and  in  its  paramount  interest  and  importance 
absorbing  for  a  season  every  other.  Thus  the  article  of 
"  Original  Sin"  is  urged  with  a  reference  to  the  scholastic 
dogma,  that  original  sin  was  a  mere  defect  of  original  right- 
eousness, the  latter  being  a  quality  superinduced,  and  not 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  Append,  p.  195;  and  Annal.  p.  207. 
t  Todd's  Life  of  Cranmer,  i.  201. 


SPIRIT  OF  THE  ARTICLES.  217 

"  the  fault  and  corruption  of  the  nature  of  every  man;" — 
the  article  of  "  Works  before  Justification,"  with  a  similar 
view  to  another  theory  of  the  subtle  doctors,  that  by  a 
certain  meritorious  meetness,  a  priori,  for  the  reception  of 
God's  grace,  the  party  claimed  it  as  a  right  de  congruo,  and 
that  having  once  received  it,  he  then  claimed  its  further  ex- 
tension as  a  right,  de  condigiio.*  These  opinions,  so  cal" 
culated  to  puff  up  by  making  man  the  originator  of  his  own 
justification,  our  Reformers  would  not  tolerate,  and  framed 
their  confessions  accordingly.  It  would  not  fall  within  the 
plan  of  a  work  like  the  present  to  enter  more  minutely  into 
these  investigations,  which,  after  all,  are  as  an  hedge  of 
thorns;  suffice  it  to  have  pointed  out  the  general  principle 
which  should  not  be  lost  sight  of  in  forming  our  judgment 
of  the  articles.  Thus  considered  they  will  be  scarcely 
thought  to  determine,  or  to  be  intended  to  determine, 
the  peculiar  points  of  Caivinistic  controversy  either  wav: 
they  will  be  rather  thought  to  be  composed  simply  for 
the  purpose  assigned  in  the  title  prefixed  to  the  original 
articles,  "  for  the  avoiding  of  controversy  in  opinions, 
and  the  establishment  of  a  godly  concord  in  certain  mat- 
ters of  religion;"!  an  object  which  was  not  likely  to  be  ob- 
tained by  the  decided  adoption  of  any  party  views,  be 
that  p.irty  what  it  might;  and,  therefore,  King  James,  ac- 
cording to  his  declaration  prefixed  to  the  Articles,  "  took 
comfort  that  all  clergymen  within  his  realm  had  always 
most  willingly  subscribed  to  the  Articles  estsblished,  whicli 
is  an  argument  (he  adds)  that  they  all  agree  in  the  true  usual 
literal  meaning  of  the  said  Articles,  and  that  even  in  those 
curious  points  in  which  the  present  difierences  lie,  men  of 

*  Archbishop  Laurence,  Bamptou  Lectures,  Serni.  iv.  and  v.  This 
subject  is  treated  by  Luther  with  great  power  in  his  Commentary  on 
tlie  Epist.  to  the  Galatians;  sec  particularly  ch  ii.  v.  16, 

X  See  Todd's  Cranmer,  ii.  291. 
19 


218  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND 

all  sorts  take  the  Articles  of  the  church  of  England  to  be 
for  them."  Yet  nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  in 
the  time  of  James  the  divisions  of  opinion  upon  speculative 
points  of  theology  were  both  wide  and  numerous;  high  and 
low  church  principles  (as  they  are  called)  never  having 
been  more  violently  opposed  to  each  other  than  then.  Here, 
therefore,  as  in  all  other  of  their  measures,  did  the  Reform- 
ers make  their  moderation  known  unto  all  men,  not  hoping 
or  desiring  to  confine  religious  opinion  so  closely  as  there- 
by to  prejudice  religious  sincerity,  nor  expecting  that  the 
pyramid  of  a  national  Church  would  stand  firm  when  set 
upon  an  apex  instead  of  a  base. 

On  a  review  of  these  several  works  by  which  the  Church 
of  England  was  restored,  it  can  scarcely  fail  to  be  matter 
of  admiration  and  wonder,  that  so  fair  a  fabric  should  have 
risen  under  the  hands  of  the  Reformers  out  of  such  disorder, 
almost  at  once;  that  in  the  very  agony  of  a  first  attempt  they 
should  have  thrown  off  a  comprehensive  scheme  of  doctrine 
and  devotion  which  scarcely  called  for  any  subsequent  revi- 
sion; that  they  should  not  only  have  hewn  out  such  admirable 
materials,  but  have  brought  them,  too,  in  so  short  a  season,  to 
so  excellent  a  work.  In  this  our  day  (overcast  and  troubled  as 
it  is)  we  can,  perhaps,  scarcely  transfer  ourselves,  even  in 
imagination,  to  the  tumultuous  age  of  a  Cranmer  and  a  Ridley, 
or  fully  appreciate  the  sagacity  which,  under  God's  blessing, 
conducted  them  through  such  conflicting  elements  with  such 
signal  triumph.  Yet  so  it  was;  and  with  the  gorgeous  ceremo- 
nies of  the  church  they  had  grown  up  in  soliciting  their  senses 
on  the  one  hand,  endeared,  too,  by  all  the  holy  recollections 
of  their  youth  and  even  manhood;  and  contempt  for  all 
decency  of  apparel  and  ritual,  the  natural  re-action  of  former 
abuses,  assailing  them  on  the  other;  these  judicious  men 
yielded  themselves  to  neither  extreme,  but  adopting  the 
iriiddle  locuj,  (alas!   that  Milton  should  bestow  upon  them 


REFORMERS  CHOOSE  A  MIDDLE   WAY.  219 

110  better  title  for  this  than  that  of  halting  prelates,*)  left  us 
a  church  alike    removed  from  ostentation  and  meanness, 
from  admiration  of  ornament  and  disdain  of  it;  a  church  re- 
taining so  much  reverence  for  ancient  customs,  and  ancient 
forms,  as  not  rashly  to  abolish  them,  and  only  so  much  as 
not  to  adopt  them  blindly.  Under  the  guidance  of  this  princi 
pie  it  was  brought  to  pass  that  though  this  same  church  was 
not  made  to  discover    the   material  flesh  and  blood    of  our 
Lord  in  the  communion,  it  was  taught  to  discover  (whatever 
Bishop  Hoadley  may  say  to  the  contrary)  more  than  mere 
commemorative  emblems;  that  while  she  does  not  presume 
to  limit  the  regenerating  influence  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  the 
single  mode  of  baptism,  and  exclude  from  all  possible  ad- 
mission   into    heaven   every    soul  of  man    which    has  not 
partaken  of  that   rite,    for   "  the    Spirit  which  works    by 
means    may   be   not    tied    to    means,"!    she    declares    it 
generally  necessary   to  salvation;    that   whilst  she  teaches 
the  absolute  need  of  a  Saviour  and  of  a  Spirit,  to  restore 
in  us  that  image  of  God  which  was  greviously  defaced  by 
the  fall,  and  imputes  such  restoration  to   the   merits  of  a 
Saviour  and  the  influence  of  the  Spirit,  she  thinks  it  of  in- 
ferior consequence  to  determine  how  far  gone  from  original 
righteousness  we  may  be,  resting  satisfied  with  the  assertion 
(to  the  truth  of  which  every  one  who  knows  his  own  heart 
must  subscribe)  that  we  are  at  any  rate  "  very  far  gone," 
"  qiicim  longissime,^^  as  far  as  it  is  possible,  consistently 
with  the  possession  of  a  moral  nature  at  all,  and  responsi- 
bility for  our  actions;  that  whilst  she  does  not  allow  mar- 
riage  to    be    a  sacrament,  as   remembering,   that  it  is  no 
ratified  means  of  grace,  still  less  does  she  regard  it  as  a  civil 
contract,  as  remembering,  also,  that  in  it  is  signified  the  spi- 

*  Prose  Works,  edited  by  George  Burnett,  i.  7. 
t  Bishop  Hall,  Ep.  Decad.  iv.  4. 


220  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

ritual  marriage  and  unity  of  Christ  and  his  church,  and 
that  male  and  female  God  joined  together;  that  whilst  she 
does  not  enforce,  on  pain  of  damnation,  confession  to  the 
priest,  or  hold  the  act  to  be  essential  to  the  forgiveness  of 
the  sin,  she,  nevertheless,  solemnly  exhorts  such  persons  as 
have  a  troubled  conscience,  and  know  not  how  to  quiet  it, 
to  go  to  a  minister  of  God^and  open  to  him  their  grief,  that 
they  may  receive  from  him  the  benefit  of  absolution,  to- 
gether with  ghostly  counsel  and  advice. 

With  such  discretion  did  our  Eeformers  retain  the  good 
which  was  in  the  Church  of  Rome  whilst  they  rejected  the 
evil,  putting  the  one  in  vessels  to  be  kept,  and  casting  the 
other  away;  with  such  temper  did  they  refuse  to  be  scared 
by  the  abuses  of  past  times,  or  the  scrupulosities  of  their 
own,  into  narrowing  needlessly  that  ground  on  which  they 
invited  a  nation  to  take  its  stand,  and  which  they  well  knew 
must  be  broad  to  admit  of  it.  And  so  it  came  about,  that  a 
form  of  faith  and  worship  was  conceived  which  recommend- 
ed itself  to  the  piety  and  good  ?ense  of  the  people;  to  which 
they  reverted  with  gladness  of  heart  when  evil  times  after- 
wards compelled  them  to  abjure  it  for  a  season;  towards 
which,  those  who  have  since  dissented  and  withdrawn 
from  it  have  so  often  seen  occasion  (or  if  not  they,  their 
children,  after  them,)  to  retrace  their  steps,  and  tacitly  to 
acknowledge  that  whilst  they  sought  meat  for  their  lust, 
they  had  rejected  angels'  food. 

God  grant  that  a  church  which  has  now  for  nearly  three 
centuries,  amidst  every  extravagance  of  doctrine  and  disci- 
pline which  has  spent  itself  around  her,  still  carried  herself  as 
the  mediator,  chastening  the  zealot  by  words  of  soberness, 
and  animating  the  hike-warm  by  words  that  burn — that  a 
churcli  which  has  been  found  on  experience  to  have  success- 
fully promoted  a  quiet  and  unobtrusive  and  practical  piety 
amongst  the  people,  such  as  comes  not  of  observation,  bi  t 


MODERATION  OF  THE  CHURCH.  221 

is  seen  in  the  conscientious  discharge  of  all  those  duties  of 
imperfect  obligation  which  are  the  bonds  of  peace,  but 
which  laws  cannot  reach — that  such  a  church  may  live 
through  these  troubled  times  to  train  up  our  children  in  the 
fear  of  God,  when  we  are  in  our  graves;  and  that  no  strong 
delusion  sent  amongst  us  may  prevail  to  her  overthrow,  and 
to  the  eventual  discomfiture  (as  they  would  find  too  late  to 
their  cost)  of  many  who  have  thoughtlessly  and  ungratefully 
lifted  up  their  heel  against  her  ! 


19* 


222 


CHAPTER  XI. 

HOOPER. PURITANS. EXPECTATIONS  OF  THE  ROMAN  CATHO- 
LICS.— Edward's  death. — lady  jane  grey. 

But  though  the  leading  Reformers  were  men  of  modera- 
tion, there  was  a  party  now  growing  up  in  the  church  of 
another  temper,  and  a  more  rigid  mould.  Hooper,  the  type 
of  it  at  that  time,  had  resided  for  some  years  amongst  the 
foreign  Protestants  of  Germany  and  Switzerland,  where 
the  promulgation  of  the  Interim,  a  half  measure,  uniting 
something  of  Popish  forms  with  something  of  Protestant 
principles;  had  put  men  upon  considering  the  question  con- 
cerning the  use  of  things  indifferent.  He  took  the  side  of 
the  more  rigorous  casuists;  and,  accordingly,  when  the 
bishopric  of  Gloucester  was  offered  him,  (for  he  was  one 
of  the  most  sharp  and  searching  preachers  of  his  day,  and 
of  a  conscience  above  fear  or  favour,  sometimes,  perhaps, 
above  reason  too,)  he  alleged  certain  scruples,  in  which  he 
was  seconded  by  John  a  Lasco,  and  the  churches  of  the 
strangers  in  England,  chiefly  touching  the  episcopal  habits, 
which  then  consisted,  besides  the  rochet  of  white  linen  as 
still  worn,  of  a  chimere  or  robe,  to  which  the  lawn  sleeves 
are  attached,  of  scarlet  silk;  the  latter  gorgeous  article  of 
dress,  which  was  not  superseded  by  the  black  satin  at  pre- 
sent worn,  till  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  seems  to  have  been 
the  chief  offence  to  Hooper,  who  accordingly  for  a  while  de- 
clined  the  mitre.  Here  was  the  beginning  of  those  troubles 
which;  however  respectable  in  their  origin,  were  soon  des- 
tined to  make  havoc  of  the  Church's  peace;  and  Hooper  is 


CRANMER  NOT  A  PURITAN.  223 

one  of  the  few  bishops  (for  a  bishop  he  eventually  became) 
on  whom  the  Puritans  of  every  age,  not  excepting  even 
Neal  himself,  have  looked  witli  an  eye  of  favour.  It  seems 
a  strange  thing  to  us,  that  men  should  have  been  ever  found 
ready  to  make  shipwreck  of  charity,  and  to  risk  the  Refor- 
mation altogether  (for  the  Roman  Catholics  were  on  the 
alert  to  profit  by  the  divisions)  upon  matters  so  unimpor- 
tant in  themselves  as  the  colour  or  material  of  a  coat;  or 
that  such  precisians  should  have  been  met  with  as  ex- 
pected, and  required  the  actual  warrant  of  Scripture  for  eve- 
ry trivial  matter  which  they  did  throughout  the  day,  to  the 
utter  extinction  of  Christian  liberty:*^  yet  the  number  of  such 
persons  grew  and  prevailed:  and  though  Hooker  in  his 
great  work,  now  but  little  read,  because  to  our  apprehen- 
sions so  large  a  portion  of  it  is  occupied  in  fighting  with 
shadows,  no  shadows  however  then,  did  his  best,  as  did 
Sanderson  his  most  learned  contemporary,!  to  stave  off  the 
crisis;  it  came  with  the  rebellion  nevertheless,  when  a  mor- 
bid conscience  gave  place,  as  it  often  does,  to  fanaticism  or 
hypocrisy,  and  the  substantial  fruits  of  the  Spirit  were  lost 
in  real  or  pretended  paroxysms.  Surely  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  not  meat  and  drink.  St.  Paul  in  all  his  episUes  deals 
boldly  with  such  beggarly  elements;  nor  does  the  example 
of  our  Lord  himself  sanction  scruples  merely  fastidious.  He 
did  not  listen  to  the  accusations  against  his  disciples  that 
they  had  plucked  the  ears  of  corn  on  the  Sabbath  day,  or 
that  they  had  eaten  with  unwashen  hands;  and  it  is  re- 

*  Warburton  imagined  that  there  was  a  political  feeling  coupled  with 
this  scruple.  Such  a  principle,  pursued  through  its  necessary  deduc- 
tions, leading  to  a  reformation  of  Civil  government  on  Jewish  ideas. 
Alliance  of  Church  and  State,  book  i.  sect.  4.  note. 

t  See  his  two  admirable  Sermons,  xi.  and  xii.  ad  Aulam,  on  1  Cor. 
X.  23.  "  All  things  are  lawful  for  me,  but  all  things  are  not  expedient; 
all  things  are  lawful  for  me,  but  all  things  edify  not. 


224  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

markable  that,  though  according  to  the  strict  letter  of  the 
Levitical  law  the  Passover  was  to  be  partaken  of  with  loins 
girded,  and  shoes  on  the  feet,  and  a  staff  in  the  hand,  and 
in  haste,  Jesus  appears  to  have  acquiesced  in  a  custom  long 
established,  and  to  have  sat  down  with  his  disciples,  and 
to  have  conversed  with  them  at  his  leisure,  one  of  them 
leaning  upon  his  bosom. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  by  some  to  claim  Cranmeras 
belonging  to  the  same  party  in  his  heart,  howbeit  restrained 
by  force  of  circumstances  from  fully  declaring  himself. 
They  would  persuade  us  that  he  was  prepared  to  have  gone 
much  further  in  his  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  (such,  say 
they,  was  the  report  amongst  the  English  exiles  at  Frank- 
fort,)* but  that  a  wicked  clergy  and  convocation  held  his 
hand;  and  that  more  was  meant  than  met  the  ear,  even  when 
under  the  cruel  mockery  of  his  accusers,  as  they  stripped 
him  of  the  canvass  pontificals  in  which  they  had  arrayed 
him,  he  observed,  "  that  it  needed  not;  for  he  had  done 
with  that  gear  long  before. "t  That  he  set  no  greater  store  by 
the  innocent  trappings  of  his  office  than  was  due  to  them  from 
a  man  ot  sense  and  piety  may  be  well  believed;  he  had  al- 
ready said  as  much:  "  If  the  bishops  of  this  realm,"  he  re- 
marks in  a  letter  to  Cromwell,  "  pass  no  more  of  their  names, 
styles,  and  titles,  than  I  do  of  mine,  the  King's  Highness 

shall  soon    order  the   matter  betwixt  us For  I 

pray  God  never  to  be  merciful  to  me  at  the  general  judgment 
if  1  perceive  in  my  heart  that  I  set  more  by  any  title,  name, 
or  style,  that  I  write,  than  I  do  by  the  paring  of  an  apple, 
further  than  it  shall  be  to  the  setting  forth  of  God's  word  and 
will."  Let  it,  however,  be  remembered,  that  these  words 
were  written  by  Cranmer  in  vindication  of  himself  against 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  266.  f  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  375. 


CRANMER  NOT  A  PURITAN.  225 

the  idle  but  malicious  charge  of  Gardiner,  that  by  assuming 
the  title  of"  Primate  of  all  England"  he  had  trenched  upon 
the  King's  supremacy,  and  that  the  period  at  which  they 
were  written  was  the  year  1535,  when  as  yet  the  Puritan 
question  had  not  been  stirred.*  But  though  the  general  cha- 
racter of  the  Archbishop's  mind,  which  was  averse  from  ex- 
tremes of  every  kind,  is  enough  to  oppose  to  any  claim  of 
this  description,  there  are,  besides,  some  distinct  particulars 
in  his  history,  which  argue  clearly  enough  that  if  he  did  not 
foresee  the  danger  of  the  Puritan  principle,  he  at  least  had 
no  inclination  to  lend  himself  to  its  advancement.  To  Hoo- 
per's imaginations  he  did  not  give  place,  no  not  for  an  hour, 
resolutely  opposing  even  the  King's  letter  of  recommenda- 
tion that  the  ceremonies  used  in  consecration  might  in  his 
particular  case  be  dispensed  with;t  a  degree  of  obduracy 
this,  at  which  the  martyrologist  (whose  bias  is  well  known) 
significantly  hints,  "  for  he  will  name  nobody,"  as  culpable 
in  the  Archbishop,  and  such  as  called  for  the  Cross  to  put 
an  end  by  a  real  and  terrible  visitation  to  unworthy  conten- 
tions, and  to  unite  men  who  ought  never  to  have  been  divi- 
ded, by  making  them  partners  in  bonds  and  in  death.  Nor 
is  this  all;  a  trifle  it  may  be,  but  still  it  is  a  trifle  to  our  pre- 
sent purpose,  and  characteristic  of  the  temper  of  Cranmer,  a 
straw  which  tells  the  wind  better  than  a  stone,  that  a  short 
passage  which  stands  in  the  Latin  text  of  his  catechism,  re- 
flecting on  the  mysteries  and  other  such  mummeries  as  were 
then  greatly  followed  by  the  English,  and  which  at  a  very 
early  time  were  caviare  to  the  Puritan,  is  altogether  omitted 
in  the  translation.^     But,  perhaps,  the   most  decisive  evi- 

*  Strype's  Cranmer,  Append.  No  xiv. 
f  Strype's  Cranmer,  pp.  211.  212. 

t  Compare  the  Latin  Catechism,  p,  25,  and  the  English,  p.  34.  See 
Grindal's  opinion  of  these  interludes.    Strype's  Life  of  Grindal,  p.  82. 


226  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

dence  of  all  is  the  spirit  which  pervades  the  whole  sermon 
"of  the  Keys"  in  this  same  catechism;  a  sermon  otherwise 
worth  perusing,  as  setting  a  difficult  subject  in  a  satisfactory 
light.  That  preachers  there  must  be,  else  how  shall  the 
people  hear?  that  they  must  not  of  themselves  "  run  to  this 
high  honour,"  else  how  are  they  "sent?"  But  if  they  be 
not  sent,  how  shall  they  fruitfully  teach;  for  it  is  not  enough 
that  the  seed  be  sown,  since  God  must  also  give  the  in- 
crease? Yet  how  can  the  blessing  of  God  be  looked  for  on 
means  which  he  has  not  sanctioned?  What  surety  is  there 
that  though  the  self-appointed  minister  work  well,  God  will 
choose  to  work  with  him?  But  if  not,  what  virtue  can  go 
out  of  the  sacraments  which  he  handles;  what  do  baptism, 
absolution,  and  the  Supper  of  the  Lord  become,  but  dead 
forms,  Christ  not  being  present  with  such  preachers?  That 
the  right  of  ministration,  therefore,  derived  from  the  apos- 
tles at  first,  who,  in  their  turn,  made  "  bishops  and  priests,'* 
("  sacerdotes,"  only,  is  the  expression  in  the  Latin,^  is  to 
continue  unto  the  end  of  the  world;  but  in  the  line  appoint- 
ed; and,  accordingly,  that  good  heed  is  to  be  taken  of  "  false 
and  privy  preachers,  which  privily  creep  into  cities,  and 
preach  in  corners,  having  none  authority,  nor  being  called 
to  this  office."  This  is  not  the  language  of  the  Puritan; 
yet  was  Cranmer  certainly  opposed  to  many  of  the  rem- 
nants of  the  Church  of  Rome,  in  themselves  indifferent;  to 
the  use  of  the  old  altars  instead  of  tables,  which  it  was  pro- 
posed to  substitute  for  them;  to  candles  at  Candlemas;  to 
ashes  on  Ash  Wednesday,  and  the  like;  all,  matters  for 
which  the  people  were  still  clamorous,  but  with  which  he 
saw  that  they  were  not  to  be  trusted;  and  thus  did  he  lay 
himself  open  to  alternate  charges  of  over-much  and  over-lit- 
tle scrupulosity,  according  to  the  quarter  from  which  the  ob- 
jection came,  sufficient  in  themselves  to  argue  that  he  chose 
out  a  path  between  either  extreme,  which  was  the  safest  and 


CRANMER  S  MODERATION.  227 

best  of  all.  There  is  something  probably  very  significant  of 
Cranmer's  own  temper  as  a  reformer,  in  the  terms  of  a  let- 
ter which  he  addresses  to  Cromwell,  soliciting  preferment 
for  one  John  Wakefield,  "  gentleman,"  as  he  is  called,  comp- 
troller of  his  own  household.  The  qualities  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  Archbishop's  notions,  recommend  him  to  the 
King's  patronage  are  these:— "  A  good  judgment  and  affec- 
tion towards  God's  word,  which  for  the  space  of  twelve 
years"  (the  term  of  Cranmer's  acquaintance  with  himj  "  he 
had  always  been  ready  to  promote  in  his  country,  not  rash- 
ly nor  seditiously,  but  gently  and  soberly;  so  that  his  own 
country  could  neither  greatly  hate  him  nor  love  him. 
They  could  not  hate  him,  for  his  kindness  and  gentleness, 
being  ready  to  do  every  man  good  as  much  as  in  his  power 
was;  and  yet  they  could  not  heartily  love  him,  because  he 
ever  commended  the  knowledge  of  God's  word,  studied  it 
himself  diligently,  and  exhorted  them  unto  the  same;  and 
spake  many  times  against  the  abusions  of  the  clergy,  for 
which  he  had  all  the  hate  that  most  of  the  clergy  could  pro- 
cure against  him."*  A  character  of  this  complexion,  mode- 
ration the  leading  feature  of  it,  was  not  the  one  to  win  upon 
a  patron,  himself  prepared  to  rush  into  the  extremes  of  the 
Puritans. 

But  the  reign  of  a  minor,  which  was  favourable  to  the 
growth  of  that  party,  indeed  Edward  had  himself,  perhaps, 
a  leaning  to  their  opinions,  was  not  unfriendly  to  the  fur- 
ther pillage  of  the  church.  Here,  therefore,  Cranmer  had 
again  to  interpose,  that  in  this  instance  he  might  protect  the 
temporalities,  as  in  the  other  he  had  protected  the  doctrines, 
of  the  Establishment.  The  division  of  the  abbey-lands 
amongst  the  nobles  seems   to  have  begot  a  general  taste 


*  This  letter  is  given  from  the  orig-inal  MS.  in  Mr.  Todd's  new  Life 
of  Cranmer,  i.  2U5, 


228  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

amongst  the  upper  classes  for  expense,  and  consequent  ap- 
petite for  spoil — it  grew  by  what  it  fed  on.  Rents  were 
raised  to  an  extravagant  height;  the  farm  for  which  Latimer's 
father  paid  from  three  to  four  pounds  a  year;  and  which 
enabled  him  to  send  a  man  and  horse  to  the  King's  service, 
and  to  portion  his  daughters  with  five  pounds  a-piece,  was, 
in  Latimer's  own  time,  let  for  sixteen  pounds  or  more,  to 
the  utter  impoverishment  of  the  occupier.*  The  waste  lands 
were  every  where  enclosed  for  sheep-walks  (the  wool  trade 
having  now  become  considerable),  to  the  annihilation  of 
those  ancient  rights  of  pasturage  which  the  neighbouring 
peasantry  enjoyed,  and  to  the  fomentation  of  fierce  rebel- 
lions throughout  the  country.!  Now  it  happened  that  the 
chantries  or  chapels  endowed  by  individuals  for  private  mas- 
ses had  survived  the  spoliation  of  Henry:  these  it  was  pro- 
posed should  be  given  to  the  King  (which  was  another 
word  for  the  nobles  through  the  King),  and  an  act  of  par- 
liament to  that  effect  was  passed  in  1547,  in  spite  of  the  op- 
position of  the  bishops,  and  of  Cranmer  above  all,  who  had 
been  in  hopes  of  reserving  these  endowments  till  Edward 
should  come  of  age,  and  tlien  inchicing  him  to  assign  them 
to  the  relief  of  the  numerous  poor  clergy  whom  the  sale  of 
tithes  had  left  almost  pennyless.  He  had  already  resisted 
encroachments  of  the  same  kind  under  Henry;  beseeching 
him  that  there  should  be  no  alienation  of  church  lands  with- 
out the  production,  at  least,  of  the  royal  warrant;  many  of 
the  nobles  being  in  the  habit  of  seizing  them  in  ths  King's 
name,  though  without  any  intention  of  appropriating  them 
to  the  King's  use.  Moreover,  in  those  exchanges  with  the 
see  of  Canterbury,  wliich  the  King  himself  proposed,  Cran- 
mer endeavoured  to  protect  it  in  its  just  rights  by  soliciting 

*  Latimer's  Serm.,  i.  268. 

t  Strype's  Craniner.  p.  185.     Latimer's  Scrm.,  i.  2G8. 


FURTHER  SPOLIATION  OF  THE  CHURCH.  229 

Cromwell's  opinion  of  the  terms,  "  forasmuch  as  he  him- 
self was  a  man  that  had  small  experience  in  such  cases,  and 
had  no  mistrust  at  all  in  his  prince;"*  and  thus  did  he  dex- 
terously contrive  to  uphold  and  transmit  to  his  successors 
an  ample  revenue  in  most  dangerous  times;  and  under  a 
most  despotic  monarch.  But  the  name  of  Edward  could 
not  be  interposed  with  the  same  success  between  the  nobles 
and  their  pleasure,  and  accordingly  the  see  of  Canterbury, 
nor  that  alone,  is  said  to  have  suffered  more  under  Edward 
than  under  Henry  himself;  for  the  old  cry  was  raised  of  the 
luxury  and  covetousness  of  churchmen,  and  the  old  pre- 
cedents of  dispensing  half  a  dozen  prebends  to  one  earl, 
and  a  deanery  to  another,  (such  had  been  the  predicament 
of  the  Earl  of  Hertford,  and  of  Cromwell,)t  were  again 
acted  upon;  and  laymen  were  pensioned  out  of  the  bishop- 
rics as  they  successively  fell  vacant;|  and  many  of  the  best 
estates  were  taken  away,  so  that  the  wealthiest  sees  could 
scarcely  maintain  their  diocesans ;§  and  scholars  were  sup- 
planted in  the  rewards  of  learning  by  their  superiors  in  birth, 
to  the  decay  of  the  universities  and  of  letters  in  general;  so 
that  Ridley,  now  Bishop  of  London,  Bonner  having  been 
deposed,  being  about  to  give  Grindal  a  prebend  in  St.  Paul's, 
is  prevented  by  the  council,  it  being  their  pleasure  that  the 
King  should  have  it  for  the  furniture  of  his  stable,  an  in- 
dignity of  which  he  loudly  complains  to  Cheke,  the  King's 
tutor,  urging  him  to  speak  out^upon  it  in  the  proper  quarter, 
or  to  let  that  his  letter  speak. ||  Nor  was  this  all;  commis- 
sioners were  despatched  into  every  part  of  England  in  the 
•  last  year  of  Edward,  to*gather  such  gleanings  as  were  still 

*  See  an  original  Letter  published  in  Mr.  Todd's  Life  of  Cranmer, 
i.  363. 

t  Strype's  Cranmer,  pp.  168.  279.     Burnet,  ii.  8. 

I  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  165.  §  Burnet,  ii.  203. 

II  Burnet,  iii.  197. 

20 


230  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

left  in  the  shape  of  chantry-lands  unsold,  and  furniture  of 
churches;  they  were  themselves,  however,  commonly  fore- 
stalled by  the  people,  so  that,  according  to  Heylyn,  "  many 
private  men's  parlours  were  now  hung  with  altar-cloths, 
their  tables  and  beds  covered  with  copes  instead  of  carpets 
and  coverlids,  and  many  made  carousing  cups  of  the  sacred 
chalices,  as  once  Belshazzar  celebrated  his  drunken  feast 
in  the  sanctified  vessels  of  the  Temple."*  Thus  the  locusts 
took  what  had  escaped  from  the  hail.  How  much  further 
this  dissipation  of  church  property  would  have  been  carried 
had  Edward  continued  longer  to  fill  the  throne,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  tell;  certain  it  is,  that  it  received  a  check  from  the 
restoration  of  the  Roman  Catholic  religion,  for  a  season, 
under  Mary;  and  amongst  the  mysterious  ways  in  which 
Providence  works  out  its  own  ends,  that  otherwise  fatal 
reign  might  be  the  appointed  barrier  for  securing  a  reasonable 
provision  still  for  the  Church  of  England,  and  thereby  an 
efficient,  because  an  intelligent  and  independent,  clergy. 
For  the  Roman  Catholic  party  began  now  to  be  enlisted  by 
the  dictates  of  common  prudence  on  the  conservative  side. 
The  signs  of  the  times,  which  were  watched  by  all  men 
with  extreme  anxiety,  were  seen  to  be  in  their  favour.  The 
Princess  Mary  was  a  rallying  point  for  the  partisans  of  the 
Church  of  Rome  during  the  whole  of  Edward's  reign,  more 

*  Heylyn's  Hist,  of  Reformation,  fol.  p.  134.  There  maybe  some- 
thing of  high  colouring  in  this  picture  of  spoliation;  for  Heylyn  (who 
dedicates  to  Charles  11.)  had,  as  is  well  known,  a  strong  anti-puritan 
bias,  which  is  particularly  apparent  in  the  unfavourable  complexion  he 
gives  to  Edward's  reign  in  general,  and  in  the  unfair,  though  self-con- 
tradictory, terms,  in  which  he  speaks  of  his  individual  character:  in- 
deed, so  strangely  is  he  sometimes  at  variance  with  himself  on  this 
subject,  that  he  might  almost  be  thought  to  have  written  for  one  set 
of  readers  and  revised  for  another.  Still  the  weakness  of  a  minority 
is  seen  at  this  period — tlie  more  so  after  the  rule  of  a  Henry — soliti- 
que  jugum  gravitate  carebat. 


SIGNS  OF  THE  TIMES.  231 

suited  to  the  office  than  a  much  cleverer  woman  less  firm 
of  purpose.  Her  brother  had  reluctandy  winked  at  the  use 
of  the  mass  in  her  own  chapel  when  it  was  forbidden  else- 
where, hoping  to  win  her  to  a  different  mind,  till  the  per- 
mission being  abused,  was  at  length  withdrawn,  not,  how- 
ever, abruptly,  for  the  affair'was  pending,  out  of  delicacy  to 
her  scruples,  from  June,  1549,  to  September,  1551;  when 
the  council  at  length  wrote  to  her,  that  her  Grace's  example 
*'  hindered  the  good  weal  of  the  realm,  which  thing  they 
thought  was  not  unknown  to  her.^^^  But  the  spirits  of 
the  Romanists  were  not  to  be  thus  broken  down.  For  the 
three  last  years  of  Edward's  reign  their  confidence  was 
perpetually  on  the  increase.  The  life  of  the  Princess  was 
seen  to  be  of  fairer  promise  than  the  King's,  and  an  eye  to 
the  character  of  the  next  in  the  succession  is  a  striking  poli- 
tical feature  of  the  times  of  which  we  are  treating,  when 
the  balance  between  contending  factions  was  as  yet  scarcely 
struck  either  way.  The  nobles  who  espoused  the  cause  of 
the  Reformers  were  at  strife  amongst  themselves;  Somerset 
contending  with  his  brother,  the  admiral,  even  to  the  death; 
himself  beheaded  in  his  turn,  and  succeeded  as  Protector 
by  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  afterwards  Duke  of  Northumber- 
land, a  man  unpopular  and  suspected.  The  adversaries  of 
the  Reformation  were  not  slow  to  take  advantage  of  the 
disorder.  Whilst  the  government  was  united,  many  lead- 
ing persons  amongst  them  had  recanted,  and  even  Bonner 
and  Gardiner  "began  to  condescend,"  as  Fox  expresses  it, 
"  to  good  conformity;"  but  they  now  took  heart,  turned 
about,  and  braved  a  persecution  which  was  likely  to  be 
short,  and  which  was  sure  to  recommend  them  to  the  future 
sovereign. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  friends  of  the  Reformation,  read- 

*  Fox.  ii.  707. 


232  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

ing  these  prognostics  the  other  way,  had  fearful  forebodings 
of  evils  to  come,  and  were  naturally  cast  down.  The 
feverish  condition  of  the  public  mind  is  seen  in  the  restless 
solicitude  with  which  they  treasured  such  omens  up.  The 
execution  of  the  Protector;  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Suf- 
folk and  his  brother  by  the  sweating  sickness,  the  sons  of 
a  father  who  was  Cranmer's  good  friend,  and  themselves 
children  of  great  hope;  the  loss  of  Fagius  and  Bucer  at  a 
critical  moment,  were  all  accounted  harbingers  of  ill.* 
John  Knox,  too,  like  another  son  of  Anvanus,  hfted  up  his 
voice  in  various  parts  of  England;  and  as  he  marked  the 
tide  again  setting  in  towards  Rome,  foretold  for  England 
unquiet  times,  hiemem  instarert  and,  indeed,  the  general 
agitation  of  those  days,  that  feeling  so  forcibly  expressed 
in  the  language  of  Scripture  by  "  distress  of  nations  with 
perplexity,"  is  strongly  portrayed  by  an  act  of  parliament 
which  was  passed  in  1550,  "  Against  spreading  of  Prophe- 
cies," as  well  as  by  the  numbers  of  idle  stories  of  unnatu- 
ral births  and  sea-monsters  which  were  then  propagated, 
and  which  are  faithfully  preserved  in  the  pages  of  the 
Chroniclers.^  Charity  leads  us  to  trust  that  the  dark  insinua- 
tions against  the  Duke  of  Northumberland  (as  though  he 
hastened  the  end  of  Edward  for  the  purpose  of  setting  the 
crown  on  the  head  of  Lady  Jane  Grey,  who  had  married 
his  son,)  had  no  other  foundation  than  the  intense  anxiety 
with  which  the  life  of  the  King  was  thus  regarded  by  mul- 
.litudes  of  his  subjects,  who  saw  no  other  hope  for  them- 
selves or  for  their  cause  than  the  frail  one  its  continuance 
afforded.  Certain  it  is,  that  the  extracts  given  by  Strype 
from  Cranmer's  letters,  to   Cecil,  who  was  in  attendance 


*  Strype's  Cranmer,  313.  t  Id.  360. 

t  See  Sir  John  Hay  ward's  Life  and  Reign  of  Edward  VI.  given  in 
Kennet's  Hist,  of  England. 


DEATH  OF  EDWARD. 


233 


upon  the  court  in  a  progress  to  England,  the  year  before 
the  King's  death,  cannot  be  fairly  interpreted  (though  the 
honest  annalist  is  of  a  contrary  opinion)  as  implying  that 
the  Archbishop  was  then  under  any  apprehensions  for 
Edward's  personal  safety.*  And  it  is  very  possible,  that  when 
the  "  wise  woman"  was  called  in  at  last  (the  case  becoming 
desperate,)  the  patient  should  have  grown  rapidly  worse, 
without  any  further  imputation  upon  the  empiric  than  pre- 
sumption for  having  attempted  the  cure,  or  upon  the  Pro- 
tector than  folly  for  having  permitted  tfie  attempt  to  be 
made.f  But  if  we  acquit  Northumberland  of  treason,  it  is 
not  so  easy  to  acquit  him  of  treachery;  for  that  the  dying 
prince  should  have  made  a  will,  not  merely  withholding  the 
crown  from  its  rightful  owner,  the  Princess  Mary,  (for  con- 
sidering the  hearty  desire  he  entertained  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  Protestant  cause  this  might  have  been  his  own  act 
and  deed,)  but  from  his  sister  Elizabeth,  herself  a  Protestant, 
and  to  settle  it  upon  a  cousin  who  happened  to  be  the  duke's 
daughter-in-law,  this  looks  like  the  machination  of  another 
head  than  his  own.  This  will  Cranmer  long  refused  to 
subscribe;  but  at  last,  over-persuaded  by  the  authority  of 
the  judges,  all  of  whom  except  Judge  Hales,  concurred  in 
it,  and  above  all,  by  the  entreaties  of  Edward  himself,  who 
represented  the  hopeless  condition  to  which  the  Reforma- 
tion would  be  reduced  by  acquiescing  in  the  natural  descent 
of  the  crown,  (as  if  the  wrath  of  man  was  to  work  the  right- 
eousness of  God,)  in  an  evil  hour  he  took  the  pen  and 
signed  the  document  and  what  was  tantamount  to  his  own 
death-warrant  together. 

And  now  Edward,  having  finished  his  short  but  saintly 
course,  his  sixteenth  year  not  yet  completed,  commended 
his  people   to    God,    especially  beseeching  him    that    he 

*  Strypc's  Cranmer,  p.  283,  t  Burnet,  ii.  224. 

20* 


234  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

*' would  defend  his  realm  from  papistry;"  and  then  as  he 
sunk  in  the  arms  of  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  he  exclaimed,  "  I 
am  faint;  Lord,  have  mercy  on  me;  and  receive  my  spirit;'* 
and  so  he  departed.  Thus  ended  this  reign  of  mercy:  for 
ill  as  the  principle  of  toleration  vras  in  those  days  under- 
stood, violently  as  it  had  been  outraged  by  Henry,  who  pre- 
ceded, and  as  it  was  destined  to  be  by  Mary,  who  followed 
him,  during  the  six  years  that  Edward  sat  upon  the  throne, 
neither  in  Smithfield,  nor  in  any  other  quarter  of  the  realm 
did  any  man  suffer  for  religious  opinion,  whether  Catholic 
or  Protestant,  save  the  two  of  whom  mention  has  been 
made  already — the  Dutchman  and  Joan  of  Kent.*  And 
even  in  cases  of  imprisonment  and  deprivation,  as  in  those 
of  Bonner,  Bishop  of  London,  and  Gardiner,  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  the  parties  were  proceeded  against  rather  as 
political  than  religious  delinquents,  rather  as  rebels  than 
heretics;  a  doctrine  being  sedulously  taught  by  these  and 
other  leaders  of  the  Catholic  party,  and  echoed  back  both 
by  the  Princess  Mary  and  by  the  insurgents  of  Devon,  that 
neither  were  the  decrees  of  the  council  binding,  the  regal 
power  not  being  transferable,  nor  yet  those  of  the  King, 
he  being  still  a  minor;  wherefore,  that  the  laws  of  the  land, 
as  Henry  left  them,  were  those  which  w^ere  to  be  obeyed 
until  the  king  should  come  of  age,  and  none  other.!  It  is 
obvious  that  such  a  principle,  generally  acknowledged  and 
acted  upon,  would  have  ended  in  leaving  the  country  with- 
out any  government  at  all;  for  if  the  old  statutes  should  prove 
inapplicable  to  an  unforseen  emergency,  and  there  were  no 
authority  adequate  to  supply  the  defect,  anarchy  must  ensue. 
It  is  true  that  advantage  was  sometimes  taken  of  overt  acts 
of  non-conformity  on  which  to  prosecute,  because  where 


*  Fox,  ii.  554.  t  Burnet,  ii.  127,  165. 


THE  REFORMERS  IN  DANGER.  235 

there  might  be  moral,  there  might  not  be  legal,  evidence  of 
disaffection,  the  offence  being  difficult  of  proof;  still  here 
the  gravamen  no  doubt  lay  of  many  of  the  charges  pre- 
ferred against  the  Roman  Catholic  dignitaries,  and  of  the 
penalties  inflicted  on  them  in  the  reign  of  Edward;  and  the 
necessity  which  lay  upon  the  council  of  seeing  that  the  com- 
monwealth took  no  damage  at  their  hands  in  those  danger- 
ous  times,  may  be  thought  to  excuse  proceedings  which, 
however,  were  attended  by  some  aggravating  circumstances 
of  rigour  but  too  common  in  those  days. 

It  is  impossible  to  contemplate  the  death  of  Edward  with- 
out feeling  for  Cranmer  and  his  colleagues  in  the  Reforma- 
tion. Their  hearts  might  well  sink  within  them  in  that 
hour.  They  had  gone  boldly  forward  in  their  great  enter- 
prise, beholding  the  danger  before  their  eyes,  for  they  could 
not  be  blind  to  it,  but  determined  to  do  their  duty  and  fear 
not;  exasperating  the  Catholic  party,  headed  as  it  was  by  a 
most  bigoted  princess,  then  the  presumptive,  now  the  ac- 
tual, possessor  of  the  throne,  nor  shrinking  from  incurring 
her  personal  displeasure,  where  the  interests  of  religion  re- 
quired the  risk,  by  the  honest  counsel  they  gave  with  respect 
to  the  concessions  due  to  her,  or  the  privileges  which  it  was 
fitting  to  deny  or  to  resume.  Now  they  were  in  a  situation 
which  they  must  have  long  foreseen  was  likely  to  be  their 
lot — at  the  mercy  of  an  implacable  foe.  And  the  days  and 
nights  of  anxiety  which  they  must  have  spent  at  this  crisis 
waiting  for  the  policy  of  Mary  to  disclose  itself,  must  be 
carried  to  the  account  of  those  silent  sufferings  which  formed 
no  small  part  of  the  purchase-money  paid  for  the  church 
they  bequeathed  to  us,  and  which  were  more  insupportable, 
perhaps,  however  less  imposing,  than  the  fire  and  the  fag- 
got itself. 


236 


CHAPTER  XII. 

MARY. SUPPRESSION  OF    THE    REFORMATION. PERSECUTION 

OF  THE  REFORMERS. FOx's  ACTS  AND  MONUMENTS. 

That  God  seeth  not  as  man  seeth,  is  a  truth  which  he, 
who  reads  history  aright,  must  soon  be  tauo^ht.  Cranmer, 
overcome  by  his  apprehensions  for  the  safety  of  the  reform- 
ed church  under  a  Catholic  queen,  had  acted  from  a  princi- 
ple of  expediency,  and  placed,  as  far  as  an  individual  could, 
the  Lady  Jane  Grey  on  a  throne  which  did  not  belong  to 
her.  Had  the  event  turned  out  as  he  hoped,  had  her  seat 
been  estabhshed,  and  Mary  been  set  aside  forever,  it  is  pro- 
bable that  the  Protestant  cause,  the  very  object  which  this 
act  of  injustice  was  meant  to  serve,  would  never  have  been 
so  successful  as  it  proved;  for  it  would  have  been  still  fur- 
stripped  of  its  temporal  supports,  and  it  would  not  have 
been  consecrated  by  the  blood  of  the  martyr,  God  therefore 
ordained  for  it  the  fiery  trial;  and  the  Lady  Jane  was  de- 
posed almost  as  soon  as  she  was  proclaimed,  to  make  way 
for  her  sincere  but  narrow-minded  successor. 

Cranmer  has  fallen  upon  evil  tongues,  both  in  his  life  and 
in  his  memory.  A  report  was  spread  that  he  had  declared 
for  the  mass;  and,  indeed,  that  it  had  been  actually  restored, 
under  his  sanction,  in  his  own  cathedral  at  Canterbury;  a 
charge  which  he  repelled  in  terms  the  most  indignant,  say- 
ing, that  it  was  not  he  that  set  it  up  there,  but  "  a  false,  flat- 
tering, lying,  and  dissembling  monk,"  one  Dr.  Thornden; 
whilst  at  the  same  time  he  challenged  the  adversaries  of  the 
Reformation  to  a  public  discussion  of  its  principles,  the 
soundness  of  which  he  undertook  to  maintain.      Yet  Neal, 


MARY.  237 

who  was  not  ignorant  of  these  facts,  ungenerously  keeps 
them  back  till  he  has  indulged  in  the  repetition  of  the  slan- 
der;* thus  doling  out  reluctant  and  compulsive  justice  to  a 
man  whose  character  Protestants  ought  surely  to  protect  with 
jealousy,  be  their  denomination  what  it  may.  The  challenge, 
however,  though  it  was  not  accepted  was  not  overlooked, 
and  Cranmer  was  cited  before  the  Queen's  commissioners, 
whether  upon  the  charge  of  heresy  or  treason  or  both,  and 
was  ordered  to  keep  his  house  at  liambeth.  In  the  interval 
which  elapsed  before  he  was  finally  committed  to  the 
Tower,  he  had  probably  ample  opportunity  to  escape,  and 
w^as  urged  by  his  friends  to  profit  by  it,  but  a  sense  of  what 
was  due  to  himself,  and  to  those  who  looked  up  to  him  as 
the  leader  of  the  Reformation  in  England,  constrained  him; 
and  whilst  he  advised  the  less  conspicuous  persons  of  his 
party  to  flee  for  their  lives,  as  not  being  so  deeply  pledged, 
as  not  in  the  same  degree  prejudicing  their  cause  by  the 
abandonment  of  their  country,  and  as  having  Scripture  for 
their  warrant  if  they  fled,  he  determined  for  himself  to  abide 
the  issue  come  what  might,  and  if  it  was  so  required,  to  be 
faithful  even  unto  death.  Perhaps,  too,  for  himself,  he  might 
reckon  upon  some  grateful  recollection  in  Mary,  that  her 
life  had  been  spared  by  her  father  at  his  intercession,  and 
some  reluctance  on  her  part  to  shed  the  blood  of  a  man  who 
had  saved  her  as  a  daughter,  though  he  had  done  her  some 
wrong  as  a  queen.  But  Mary's  gratitude  was  too  brief,  or 
her  bigotry  too  vehement,  to  admit  of  this,  and  even  Sir 
James  Hales,  who  had  contended  for  her  right  succession 
at  the  critical  moment  single-handed,  was  nevertheless  con- 
mitted  to  the  Marshalsea,  when,  like  an  honest  judge  as  he 
was,  he  acted  at  the  quarter  sessions  upon  the  statutes  of 
Henry  and  Edward  touching  the  supremacy,  which  were 

*  Hist,  of  the  Puritans,  part  i.  chap.  iii.  at  the  beginning. 


238  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

Still  unrepealed,  and  refused  to  bend  the  laws  of  the  land  to 
the  pleasure  of  the  sovereign;  and  though  he  was  not  actual- 
ly put  to  death  at  the  instance  of  the  government,   yet  life 
was  made  intolerable  to  him;  so  that  having  unsuccessfully 
attempted   to  end  it    with    a    knife  whilst   in    prison,  on 
his  release  he  drowned  himself  in    a  river  near  his  own 
house.     The  conduct  of  Mary  was  marked  by  the  same 
ungrateful   oblivion  of  services   rendered  to  her  in  times 
past,  in  the  case  of  the  men  of  Suffolk.    This  was  a  county, 
in  which,  for  whatever  reason,  the  Reformation   seems  to 
have  taken  an  earlier  and  deeper  root  than  elsewhere;  and 
accordingly,  the  Reformers  of  Suffolk,  before  they  declared 
for  Mary  against  the  Lady  Jane,  stipulated  for  liberty  of  opin- 
ion in  religious  matters,  to  which  proposal  a   "  very  hope- 
ful   answer"    was  given: — She    meant   graciously   not  to 
compel  or  strain  other  men's  consciences  otherwise  than 
God   should,   as   she   trusted,  put   in   their   hearts  a  per- 
suasion  of  the  truth,   through  the  opening  of  his    word 
unto  them."     But  no  sooner  was  she  firm  in  her  seat,  than 
she  repeats  the  concession  in  an  artful  proclamation,  with 
the  ominous  addition,  "  until  such  time  as  further  order  by 
common  assent  may  be  taken  therein."*     And,  accordingly, 
Suffolk  was  soon  to  see  the  faggot  lighted  within  her  bor- 
ders, and  men  and  women  to  be  baptized  with  fire.     Mary, 
indeed,  like  her  father,  was  of  an  unforgiving  spirit:  the 
memory  of  Cranmer's  benefit  had  perished;  and  though,  at 
length,  he  was  absolved  from  the  charge  of  treason,  a  boon 
which  could  scarcely  be  refused  to  him  when  it  had  been 
conceded  to  many  others  far  more  deeply  implicated  than 
himself,  it  was  only  that  he  might  be  put  upon  his  trial  for 
heresy;  a  commutation,  which,  however  satisfactory  to  his 
feehngs,  was  likely  to  be  equally  fatal  to  his  life,  a  merciful 

*  Wilkin's  Councils,  iv.  86. 


PERSECUTION  OF  HERETICS.  239 

substitution  of  the  stake  for  the  scaffold,  and  little  more: 
for  now  the  chief  instruments  of  the  Roman  Catholic  party 
were  again  in  activity;  and  the  sword  was  commanded  to 
go  through  the  land.  Gardiner,  again  Bishop  of  Winches- 
ter, in  the  room  of  Poynet,  and  now  lord  chancellor,  and 
Bonner,  Bishop  of  London,  for  Ridley  was  deposed,  began 
once  more  to  play  their  tragical  parts,  and  whatever  could 
be  done  by  the  most  politic  and  the  most  blood-thirsty  of 
men  to  put  the  Reform'ation  down  was  unscrupulously  adopt- 
ed. Preachers  were  every  where  watched,  in  order  that 
advantage  might  be  taken  of  any  heretical  doctrines  which 
might  escape  them;  and  the  bird  of  the  air  told  the  matter, 
and  denounced  them  to  the  council,  by  whom  they  were 
silenced  or  imprisoned.  Instructions,  moreover,  were  sent 
to  all  the  bishops  to  deprive  the  married  clergy  of  their  bene- 
fices, and  to  suspend  them  from  officiating  in  a  church;  an 
edict,  by  which,  according  to  a  computation  of  Archbishop 
Parker,  three  fourths  of  all  the  ministers  in  England,  ac- 
cording to  others,  not  more  than  one  fourth,  were  ejected;* 
whilst  the  principle  of  the  measure  confining  its  operation 
chiefly,  though  not  entirely,  to  such  as  maintained  the 
opinions  of  the  Reformers,  caused  the  pulpits  throughout 
the  country,  at  one  swoop,  to  be  again  surrendered,  in 
whole,  or  in  great  part,  to  a  Roman  Catholic  priesthood. 
From  the  accession  of  Mary,  which  was  in  July,  to  the  as- 
sembling of  her  first  parliament  in  October,  there  had  been 
an  unequal  struggle  continued  between  the  old  and  new 
forms  of  faith.  It  should  seem  that  the  feeling  of  London 
had  from  the  first  set  in  for  the  Reformation.  A  preacher 
at  Paul's  Cross, t  who  had  ventured  to  disparage  Edward's 

*  Burnet,  ii.  276.      Comp.  iii.  162. 

t  The  sketch  of  this  celebrated  pulpit  given  in  the  title-page  isfi-om 
a  print  in  the  library  of  Magdalen  college,  Cambridge;  being  one  of 


240  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

memory,  whilst  making  his  court  to  Bonner,  who  was  one 
of  his  hearers,  excited  an  uproar  amongst  the  people  which 
nearly  cost  him  his  life.  A  queen's  guard  was  afterwards 
in  attendance  to  protect  the  pulpit;  and  an  order  was  issued 
by  the  mayor,  that  the  ancients  of  all  companies  should  be 
present,  lest  the  preacher  should  be  discouraged  by  his  small 
auditory."*  Still  in  the  country  the  cause  of  the  Pope  was 
far  the  more  popular;  custom  pleaded  for  it;  its  pageants 
were  agreeable  to  the  taste  of  the  million;  some  hope,  too, 
might  be  entertained  of  the  recovery  of  the  rights  of  pastu- 
rage, if  the  abbeys  were  restored,  and  of  the  charities  and 
hospitalities,  which  had  ceased  to  flow  since  the  suppres- 
sion: then  the  disposition  of  the  Queen  was  known  before 
she  positively  proclaimed  it  by  her  policy;  her  own  prac- 
tice was  enough  to  prove  her  future  intentions;  and  such 
persons  as  were  of  a  neutral  character,  a  very  large  class  in 
every  country,  went  over  to  her  side:  above  all,  the  Roman 
Catholic  clergy,  stimulated  by  the  recollection  of  past 
wrongs  (as  they  would  naturally  hold),  and  alive  to  the 
prospect  of  good  things  in  store  for  them,  put  forth  all  their 
strength;  so  that  the  parliament  now  assembled  made  no 
scruple  of  reversing  all  the  proceedings  (save  one)  of  the 
two  former  reigns,  aud  Mary  became  at  once  supreme,  and 
her  church  once  more  dominant.  The  single  point  to  which 
the  parliament,  so  compliant  in  points  of  doctrine,  was  re- 
solutely opposed,  was  a  proposal  for  a  relinquishment  of 
the  abbey  lands.  This  met  with  a  vigorous  resistance  from 
their  present  possessors;  and  Cromwell's  sagacity  was  now 
perceived  when  he  bound  over  the  leading  families  of  every 
county  to  keep  the  faith  delivered  to  them,  in  securities  of 


the  many  curiosities  collected   by  Pepys;  for  a  sight  of  which  I  a 
indebted  to  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Lodge. 
*  Fox,  iii.  18. 


m 


FORMER  LAWS  REVERSED.  241 

their  newly-acquired  estates.  Mary,  however,  did  not 
preach  what  she  was  not  prepared  to  practise;  for  her  sin- 
cere and  disinterested  devotion  to  the  Roman  Catholic  per- 
suasion was  the  virtue,  the  passion  it  might  be  rather  said, 
of  her  life;  the  piety  of  her  mother  had  imparted  to  her  in 
her  cradle  a  faith,  which  the  subsequent  sufferings  of  that 
mother  must  have  hallowed  in  her  siglit.  She,  therefore, 
with  no  selfish  or  secular  purpose,  restored  of  her  own  free 
will  whatever  abbey  lands  had  been  attached  to  the  crown,* 
as  well  as  the  first-fruits  and  tenths,  a  branch  of  papal  re- 
venue which  Henry  had  indeed  seized,  but  which  never, 
it  was  suspected,  passed  beyond  the  hands  of  Pole,  the  sole 
commissioner  for  the  disposal  of  it.t  By  Elizabeth,  who 
succeeded  to  an  exhausted  exchequer,  it  was  resumed;  nor 
was  it  finally  restored  to  the  church,  till  Queen  Anne,  as 
we  have  said  in  a  former  chapter,  generously  appropriated 
it  to  ecclesiastical  purposes;  and  accordingly  it  is  now 
known  under  the  name  of  Queen  Anne's  Bounty,  as  a  fund 
for  the  augmentation  of  small  livings.  There  were  those 
who  reminded  Mary  that  she  was  by  this  measure  impair- 
ing the  dignity  of  the  crown;  but  to  such  she  honestly  made 
answer,  that "  she  set  more  by  the  salvation  of  her  soul  than 
by  ten  kingdoms."     Happy  would  it  have  been  if  her  de-* 

*  The  new  foundations  to  which  this  measure  gave  occasion  were 
King's  Langley  in  Hertfordshire,  to  which  she  annexed  the  nunnery 
of  Dartfovdin  Kent;  the  Grey  friars  at  Greenwich;  the  College  of  Man- 
chester; St.  Bartholomew's  Priory  in  ^Smithfield;  the  House  of  the 
Knights  Hospitallers  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem:  the  Savoy  Hospital; 
Sion  Nunnery;  Westminster  Abbey:  Wolverhampton  College  in  Staf- 
fordshire; and  the  Carthusian  Priory  of  Sheen  in  Surrey — ten  in  all: 
they  were  for  the  most  part  re-annexed  to  the  crown  under  Elizabeth; 
Ellis's  Letters  of  the  Reign  of  Queen  Mary,  vol.  ii.  2d  series.  Strype's 
Annals,  p.  68. 

t  Strype's  Annals,  p.  37. 

21 


242    •  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

votedness  to  the  church  in  which  she   had  been  bred  had 
shown  itself  in  no  less  objectionable  way  than  this.      Pre- 
lates there  were,  of  her  own  party  too,  who,  had  they  been 
permitted  to  be  keepers  of  such  a  conscience,  would  have 
guided  it   for  good,  for  there  was  much  in  this  sturdiness 
of  purpose  to  be  improved.     Such  a  man  was  Tonstall,  per- 
haps such  a  man  was  Pole;  but  she  had  surrendered  herself 
to  cruel  advisers;  and  soon  became  persuaded,  that  when 
she  was  putting  honest  men  to  death,  or  driving  them  into 
exile,  she  was  doing  God  service.     Accordingly,  a  procla- 
mation was  now  issued  for  expelling  all  foreigners,  many 
of  whom  had  established  themselves  in  England  under  the 
encouragement  of  Cranmer,  and  had  contributed  at  once  by 
their  religious  opinions  and  their  scholarship  to    forward 
the  Reformation,  and  by  their  skill  in  manufactures  to  de- 
velope  the  industry  of  the  country.     Together  with  these 
not  fewer  than  eight  hundred  Englishmen,  students  chiefly, 
anticipating  more  unquiet  times  still,  also  withdrew;   and 
betaking  themselves  to  Frankfort,  Strasburgh,  Basle,  Zurich, 
Geneva,  and  other  places,  there  contracted  a  disaffection 
for  the  church  of  England,  suc-h  as  paved  the  way  for  the 
crisis  which  came  with  the  civil  wars.     The  Queen's  mar- 
riage with  Philip  only  tended  to'confirm  her  prejudices.  He 
was  a  bigot  at  heart,  though  sometimes  of  fair  profession; 
and  of  a  bigoted  nation;  and  his  unwelcome  arrival  in  Eng- 
'  land  was  but  a  signal  for  riots  among  the  people,  and  still 
greater  severity  on  the  part  of  the  government.     Joan  of 
Kent  and  the  Dutchman  had  been  executed,  probably  under 
the  law  against  Anabaptists,  enacted  in  Henry  VHI.'s  reign, 
a  sect  politically  dangerous,*  since  they  maintained  com- 
munity of  goods,  the  duty  of  destroying  the  ungodly,  and 
antinomianism  in  general.     It  was  now,  however,  thought 

*  See  Todd's  Life  of  Cranmer,  ii.  331. 


REFORMERS  IN  EXILE.  243 

advisable  to  have  a  clearer  vi^arrant  for  the  death  of  heretics, 
which  was  meditated  upon  a  great  scale;  and  the  statutes 
against  the  Lollards,  enacted  under  Richard  II.,  Henry  IV., 
and  Henry  V.,  were  revived.*  Gardiner  has  the  infamous 
credit  of  the  measure,  though  in  its  application  he  seems 
to  have  had  some  misgiving;  and  after  convicting  a  few  per- 
sons, and  those  the  leaders  of  the  Reformation,  (he  was 
even  said  to  be  bending  his  bow  at  the  chief  deer  of  all,  the 
Lady  Elizabeth,)  he  became  weary  of  his  work,  and  made 
over  the  service  of  blood  to  one  who  took  his  pastime  in  it 
like  a  leech — the  brutal  Bonner.f  Fuller,  who  has  no  love 
for  the  Bishop  of  Winchester  in  general,  makes  grateful 
mention  of  an  act  of  mercy  done  by  him  to  his  own  mater- 
nal great-grandmother,  one  Mrs.  Clark,  who  having  minis- 
tered to  the  wants  of  the  bishop  when  threatened  with  con- 
sumption and  living  in  retirement  for  a  while  at  Farnham 
Castle,  at  that  time  her  residence,  was  allowed  to  abide  in 
her  heresy  (for  she  held  the  reformed  faith),  with  his  con- 
nivance, and  was  even  protected  from  the  violence  of  others 
by  his  authority.  It  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  produce  any 
redeeming  incident  in  these  days  of  horror;  for 

"  as  the  candle  in  the  dark, 
So  shines  a  good  deed  in  a  naughty  world." 

Isaac  Walton  exhorts  his  fisherman,  when  baiting  with  a 
frog,  "  to  put  his  hook  through  the  mouth  and  out  at  his 
gilis,  and  then  with  a  fine  needle  and  silk  to  sew  the  upper 
part  of  his  leg  with  only  one  stitch  to  the  arming  wire  of 
the  hook,  and  in  so  doing  to  use  him  as  though  he  loved  him." 
And  in  the  like  compassionate  spirit  was  it  required  "  in  the 
bowels  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,"  of  those  whose  office  it 

*  Fox,  iii.  116.  t  Collier's  Eccl.  Hist.  ii.  282. 


244  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

M^as  to  burn  men  alive,  "  that  the  execution  and  punishment 
might  be  so  moderated  that  the  rigour  thereof  might  not  be 
too  extreme;"*  besides  which  it  was  the  Queen's  particular 
desire  that,  both  in  London  and  elsewhere,  there  should  be 
"  good  sermons"  preached  at  the  time  of  carrying  the  sen- 
tence into  effect;  so  that  whatever  might  be  said  of  the  act 
itself,  there  was  nothing  to  offend  the  most  fastidious  phi- 
lanthropy in  the  ceremonial. 

For  a  history  of  that  noble  army  of  martyrs  of  whom  it 
now  becomes  our  duty  to  speak,  we  are  indebted  to  JohnFox,- 
himself  an  exile  in  Mary's  reign,  and  like  most  of  those  who 
then  lived  abroad,  a  friend  of  the  Puritan  principles  at  home. 
He  had  access  to  the  archives  and  registers  of  the  bishops; 
Grindal,  who  was  himself  a  great  collector  of  such  materials, 
amongst  others  supplying  him  with  what  he  knew;  and  in 
many  instances  to  the  letters  of  the  martyrs  themselves;!  of 
all  which  documents,  says  Strype,  he  has  been  found,  by 
those  who  have  compared  his  books  with  his  authorities,  to 
have  made  a  faithful  use.  He  lived  many  years  after  his 
first  edition  was  published,  which  was  in  1563,  and  in  the 
interval  laboured  to  render  it  still  more  perfect;  suppressing 
where  he  found  reason  to  doubt,  as  in  the  story  of  Cran- 
mer's  heart  remaining  unconsumed  when  the  rest  of  his 
body  was  reduced  to  ashes;|  enlarging  where  he  was  fur- 
nished with  fresh  matter  which  he  thought  trustworthy,  as 
in  the  story  of  Gardiner's  being  stricken  with  sickness  on 
the  day  of  Cranmer's  martyrdom;§  and  taking  journeys  in 

*  Fox,  iii.  125. 

t  Strype's  Annals,  pp.  239,  240,  241.  Strype's  Life  of  Grindal,  pp. 
11. 17.  22.  fol.,  where  where  will  be  found  much  information  as  to  the 
manner  in  which  Fox's  book  was  composed. 

t  Compare  p.  444  ofthe  first  ed.  (very  scarce) with  subsequent  editions. 

§  This  incident  has  been  made  the  subject  of  much  criticism  to 
the  disparagement  of  Fox:  he,  however,  gives  it  as  hearsay  only;  and 


THE  ACTS  AND  MONUMENTS.  245 

order  to  confront  witnesses  and  sift  evidence  when  his  facts 
chanced  to  be  called  in  question;*  such  was  his  industry, 
But,  independently  of  all  knowledge  of  this,  his  pains-taking, 
the  internal  evidence  of  the  book  is  enough  to  establish  its 
general  good  faith.  There  is  a  simplicity  in  the  narrative, 
particularly  in  many  of  its  minute  details,  which  is  beyond 
all  fiction;  a  homely  pathos  in  the  stories  which  art  could 
not  reach.  Sometimes  an  expression  casually  drops  out 
which  suffices  to  prove  the  testimony  to  be  that  of  an  eye- 
witness; thus  where  the  terrible  death  of  Ridley  is  described, 
the  martyrologist  speaks  in  general  in  his  own  person;  yet 
we  read,  that  "  after  the  legs  of  the  suiferer  were  consumed 
by  reason  of  his  struggling  through  the  pain,  he  showed  that 
side  toward  ws  clean,  shirt  and  all  untouched  with  flame,"  as 
though  the  informant  (whose  words  the  historian  had  here  neg- 
lected to  accommodate)  had  been  himself  the  spectator.  Some- 
times there  is  a  frank  confession  of  ignorance,  where  a  less 
scrupulous  writer  would  have  been  under  a  great  tempta- 
tion to  supply  the  defect  of  information  by  conjecture;  thus, 
in  the  details  of  the  same  execution  of  Ridley  and  Latimer,  it 
is  observed,  that  after  they  rose  from  their  knees  the  one 
talked  with  the  other  a  little  while,  but  what  they  said,  adds 
Fox,  "  I  can  learn  of  no  man."  Above  all,  there  is  such  can- 
dour in  the  development  even  of  his  most  favourite  cha- 
racters, their  failings  as  well  as  their  virtues  so  fairly  told, 
that  it  is  plain  they  have  not  been  packed.  Thus  it  is  by 
him  we  are  taught  that  Cranmer  moved  the  king  to  the  ex- 
ecution of  Joan  of  Kent,  though  Cranmer's  general  dispo- 

thoughthe  circumstantial  details  might  not  have  been  reported  to  him 
correctly,  the  substantial  fact  maj'  be  true  nevertheless.  Fox,  too,  was 
personally  connected  with  the  family  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  (at 
whose  house  the  scene  is  said  to  have  occurred,)  being  once  tutor  in 
it.  Strype's  Annals,  pp.  110.  368. 
*  Strype's  Annals,  p.  242. 

21* 


246  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

sition  would  seem  repugnant  to  such  an  office,  and  though 
no  mention  is  made  in  Edward's  Journal  of  any  such  inter- 
ference, or,  indeed,  of  any  reluctance  on  his  own  part  which 
should  render  it  needful:  thus  of  Latimer  he  does  not  con- 
ceal that  he  probably  subscribed  on  one  occasion  certain  ar- 
ticles which  the  bishops  presented  to  him,  of  fear  rather 
than  of  conscience;*  and  of  Hooper,  his  favourite,  if  he  had 
one  among  the  martyrs,  that  he  disputed  too  pertinaciously 
and  to  the  breach  of  mutual  charity,  with  his  opponents  on 
the  subject  of  the  episcopal  habits,  and  that  the  prospect  of 
their  approaching  death  for  the  common  cause,  and  nothing 
less,  could  effect  the  cordial  union  of  the  parties.  Neither 
does  he  suppress  any  instance  of  kindness  by  which  the 
sufferings  of  the  martyrs  were  mitigated;  and  as  St.  Luke  tells 
us  of  the  centurion  entreating  Paul  courteously,  so  does  Fox 
relate  of  Saunders,  that  when  his  wife  came  to  the  prison  gate, 
with  her  young  child  in  her  arms  to  visit  her  husband,  the 
keeper,  though  he  durst  not  suffer  her  to  enter  the  prison, 
yet  look  the  little  babe  out  of  her  arms  and  brought  him  to 
his  father,  to  his  exceeding  great  joy:  and  of  Hooper's 
guard,  that  they  interceded  with  the  sheriffs  of  Gloucester 
on  behalf  of  their  charge,  that  he  might  not  be  sent  to  the 
common  gaol,  they  declaring  at  large  how  quietly,  mild- 
ly, and  patiently  he  had  behaved  himself  in  the  way,  and 
adding,  that  they  would  rather  themselves  be  at  the  pains 
to  watch  with  him  than  that  he  should  be  so  handled:  and 
of  Rowland  Taylor,  that  his  wife  and  son  Thomas  were 
permitted  to  sup  with  him  in  the  Counter,  "  by  the  gentle- 
ness of  his  keepers,;"  and  afterwards,  that  of  his  guard 
three  out  of  the  four  used  him  friendly.  It  was  to  be  ex- 
pected that  a  work  which,  had  it  been  published  a  few  years 
sooner,  (supposing   this  possible,)  would  probably  have 

*  Fox,  iii.  459. 


VINDICATION  OF  THAT  WORK.  247 

added  its  author  to  the  catalogue  of  his  own  martyrs,  should 
excite  no  small  stir  among  the  Catholics,  and  so  it  came  to 
pass.  But  they  weakened  the  force  of  their  attack  by  be- 
traying prematurely  the  spirit  which  animated  them,  sarcas- 
tically inquiring,  even  before  its  publication,  when  the 
"  Golden  Legend"  was  to  appear,  and  denouncing  the 
"  Calendar  of  Saints,"  which  they  had  heard  was  to  be 
prefixed  to  it,  as  blasphemy  against  their  own.  But  Fox 
went  on,  as  he  says  , without  fear  and  without  favour;  and  no 
sooner  was  Elizabeth  to  whom  he  dedicated,  out  of  the 
way,  than  an  examination  of  the  book  appeared,  by  Parsons 
the  Jesuit,  in  his  "  Three  Conversions  of  England,"  which 
has  furnished  more  modern  objectors  with  most  of  the 
weapons  of  their  warfare.  But  Parsons  writes  in  a  temper 
which  defeats  itself.  He  deals  in  vague  vituperation  rather 
than  in  specific  accusations  of  error;  or  where  he  ventures 
upon  the  latter,  he  often  either  wilfully  or  ignorantly  mis- 
reads Fox,  as  in  the  vapid  pleasantry  wasted  upon  Joan 
Lashford,  a  married  maid,  as  he  is  pleased  to  call  her;*  or 
he  triumphs  over  him  by  exposing  a  flaw  in  the  charac- 
ter of  a  martyr  with  an  eureka,  which  the  honest  marty- 
rologist  himself  did  not  affect  to  conceal,  and  for  the  know- 
ledge indeed  of  which  Parsons  is  altogether  indebted  to 
him,  as  where  he  makes  himself  merry  with  the  discordant 
sentiments  of  nine  martyrs  executed  together,  though  their 
want  of  uniformity  is  a  fact  which  he  learns  from  Fox  him- 
self, who  at  the  same  time  asserts  that  their  disagreement 
was  in  smaller  things  only;t  or  he  prefers  charges  against 
him  at  random  without  troubling  himself  to  ascertain 
whether  there  is  a  foundation  for  them  or  not,  as  where  he 
accuses  him  of  defacing  or  destroying  the  records  of 
cathedrals,  which  he  had  been  permitted  to  use,  lest  they 

*  Three  Conversions,  ii.  215.  t  Id.  230.     ' 


248  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

should  convict  him  of  negligence  or  fraud,  and  this  not 
upon  investigation  of  the  fact,  but  simply,  "  he  presuming 
it,"  as  though  a  charge  so  serious  was  to  be  an  affair  of  pre- 
sumption only;*  or  lasdy,  he  comments  upon  his  author  in 
so  fiendish  a  temper  of  mind,  as  would  be  in  itself  enough 
to  satisfy  every  calm  and  dispassionate  judge  that  he  spoke 
not  of  truth  or  a  love  for  it,  but  of  mere  malice;  as  where, 
^fter  debasing  the  circumstances  of  Rowland  Taylor's  story 
throughout,  he  concludes  with  a  repetition  of  his  joke 
about  the  worms  in  Hadley  church-yard,  as  given  in  Fox, 
and  subjoins,  "  this  noteth  Fox  in  the  margin  for  a  goodly 
apophthegm  of  Dr.  Taylor,  martyr;  and  with  this,  he 
saith  he  went  to  the  fire;  where  we  must  leave  him  eter- 
nally^ as  I  fear;*  and  in  a  similar  vein  he  has  the  heart  to 
write  of  Latimer  and  Ridley,  "  they  were  burned  together, 
each  of  them  taking  gunpowder  to  despatch  himself  quickly, 
as  by  Fox  is  seen,  which  yet  is  not  read  to  have  been  prac- 
tised by  old  martyrs,  and  it  seemeth  that  these  men  would 
have  the  fame  of  martyrdom  without  the  pain,  and  now 
they  have  incurred  the  everlasting  pain,  if  by  their  end 
we  may  judge. ":j:  The  man  who  could  write  thus  can 
scarcely  lay  claim  to  our  credence;  for  his  prejudice  has 
evidently  stifled  in  him  every  sense  by  which  a  regard  for 
truth  can  be  guaranteed. 

It  is  not  thought  out  of  place  to  introduce  here  this  brief 
.vindication  of  a  book,  which,  so  far  as  it  is  a  contemporary 
history,  has  been,  both  of  old,  and  of  late  an  object  of  un- 
fair depreciation,  but  from  which  no  right-hearted  Protes- 
tant can  rise,  without  being  at  once  a  sadder  and  better  man; 
— a  book,  out  of  which  we  shall  now  fearlessly  draw  our  in- 

*  Three  Conversions,  ii.  81,  and  Strype's  Annals,  p.  240. 
[   t  Id.  ii.  81,  and  Strype's  Annals,  p.  336. 
t  Id.  iii.  23. 


JOHN  ROGERS. 


249 


formation,  whilst  we  offer  to  our  readers  a  few  examples 
of  those  terrible  sufferings  which  it  is  at  once  humiliating 
to  think  that  man  could  inflict,  and  animating  to  think  that 
man  could  so  nobly  bear. 

.  The  first  called  to  take  up  his  cross  was  John  Rogers.  He 
had  been  brought  up  in  Cambridge,  and  afterwards  became 
chaplain  of  the  factory  at  Antwerp,  where  he  fell  into  the 
company  of  Tindall  and  Coverdale,  andhelped  them  to  pro- 
duce that  translation  of  the  Bible,  which  goes  by  the  name 
of  Matthew's  translation.  He  thence  removed  to  Witten- 
berg, where  he  had  the  charge  of  a  congregation  for  many 
years,  till  Edward's  accession  having  rendered  it  safe  for 
those  who  held  his  opinions  to  return  to  their  native  land, 
he  repaired  thither  with  his  wife  and  children  (for  he  was 
married),  and  was  soon  preferred  by  Ridley  to  a  prebend  of 
St.  Paul's  and  to  the  divinity  lectureship  in  that  cathedral. 
Thus  was  he  in  a  situation  to  attract  the  attention  of  Mary, 
and  to  be  smitten  by  her  evil  eye.  Accordingly,  he  was 
soon  brought  before  the  council  to  answer  for  his  doc- 
trine; and  having  been  first  confined  to  his  house,  where  he 
remained  half  a  year,  and  from  which  he  took  no  pains  to 
escape,  he  was  afterwards,  by  the  tender  mercies  of  Bonner 
committed  to  Newgate,  and  lodged  amongst  the  common 
desperadoes  of  a  gaol  for  twelve  months  more.  In  his  ex- 
aminations before  Gardiner  and  the  council  he  played  his 
part  with  the  intrepidity  of  one  who  felt  strong  in  the  right- 
eousness of  his  cause,  and  with  a  force  of  reasoning  which 
it  required  the  scoffs  and  brutal  laughter  of  his  judges  to 
smother,  for  answer  it  they  could  not.  Kneeling  on  his 
knees,  he  reminded  them  of  their  own  acquiescence  in  the 
laws  of  Henry  and  Edward;  one  amongst  them,  and  he,  the 
chief,  having  been  the  open  advocate  of  the  King's  supre- 
macy as  opposed  to  that  of  the  Pope.  He  defended  his  own 
marriage,  as  being  origmally  contracted  in  a  country  where 


250  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

marriage  was  permitted  to  priests;  and  said  that  neither  did  he 
bring  his  wife  into  England  till  the  laws  of  England  permitted  it 
too.  With  regard  to  service  in  an  unknown  tongue,  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  mass,  he  stayed  himself  upon  Scripture.  Gar- 
diner exclaiming  against  him,  that  "  he  could  prove  nothing 
by  the  Scripture,  for  that  Scripture  was  dead,  and  must 
needs  have  a  lively  expositor."  But  all  was  in  vain,  for 
they  were  bent  to  have  his  life,  and  having  been  on  several 
successive  days  brought  before  his  judges,  that  some  sem- 
blance of  justice  might  not  be  wanting,  he  was  at  last  Con- 
demned; and  on  the  4th  of  February,  in  the  year  1555,  be- 
ing Monday,  in  the  morning,  he  was  warned  suddenly  by 
the  keeper's  wife  of  Newgate  to  prepare  himself  for  the  fire. 
He  had  been  sound  asleep;  but  being  at  length  awakened, 
and  bid  to  make  haste — "then,"  said,  he,  "if  it  be  so  1 
need  not  to  tye  my  points;"  and  so  was  he  had  down  to  Bon- 
ner to  be  degraded,  of  whom  he  craved  one  petition,  that  he 
might  talk  a  few  words  with  his  wife  before  his  burning; 
but  this  poor  consolation  was  denied  him;  and  being  led  to 
Smithfield  bj  the  sheriffs,  singing  the  Miserere  as  he  went, 
his  wife,  and  eleven  children,  one  at  the  breast,  meeting  him 
by  the  way,  his  pardon  still  offered  him  at  the  stake,  on 
condition  of  his  recantation,  he  bore  himself  through  this 
most  cruel  temptation  of  all  with  a  stout  heart,  and  bravely 
washing  his  hands  in  the  flame  as  he  was  burning,  gave  up 
his  spirit  to  God.  Notwithstanding  the  care  which  had 
been  taken  to  remove  his  writings,  during  his  confinement 
in  prison,  he  had  contrived  to  evade  the  vigilance  of  his 
keepers;  and  it  was  supposed,  that  when  he  wished  to  have 
a  word  with  his  wife  before  he  was  put  to  death  it  was 
to  tell  her  where  they  were  secreted.  If  so,  however, 
it  proved  needless;  for  when  she  and  her  son  afterwards 
visited  his  cell,  and  were  on  the  point  of  going  away,  the 
latter  chanced  to  cast  his  eye  toward  a  dark  corner  under  a 


HOOPER.  251 

pair  of  stairs,  and  there  perceived  a  black  packet  of  papers, 
which  on  examination  turned  out  to  be  an  account  of  his 
trial,  written  in  his  own  hand,  wherein  was  contained,  as 
well  many  of  the  details  already  given,  as  a  very  touching 
priayer,  begging  of  God  to  sustain  him,  and  all  others,  in 
the  like  case,  through  their  great  need,  and  importuning  all 
"  to  be  good  to  his  poor  and  most  honest  wife,  being  a  poor 
stranger;  and  all  his  little  souls,  hers  and  his  children;  whom 
(he  adds,)  with  all  the  whole  faithful  and  true  catholic  con- 
gregation of  Christ,  the  Lord  of  life  and  death  save,  keep,  and 
defend,  in  all  the  troubles  and  assaults  of  this  vain  world, 
and  bring  at  the  last  to  everlasting  salvation,  the  true  and 
sure  inheritance  of  all  crossed  Christians.  Amen,  Amen." 
So  perished  the  first  champion  of  the  reformed  church;  and 
it  has  been  observed,  in  reference  to  their  leader,  that  of 
those  who  underwent  the  same  fiery  trial,  married  men,  and 
the  parents  of  many  children,  met  their  deaths  the  most 
courageously. 

On  the  9th  of  February,  five  days  after  Rogers,  died  one 
who  had  been  with  him  in  prison,  and  stood  beside  him 
at  the  same  judgment-seat — Hooper.  He  had  escaped  from 
the  Six  Acts  in  Henry's  time,  to  the  Continent,  and  return- 
ing when  Edward  reigned  in  the  room  of  his  father,  was 
promoted  to  the  see  of  Gloucester.  Of  his  scruples  respect- 
ing the  habits  and  oath  mention  has  been  made  already; 
scruples,  which  his  residence  abroad  had  strengthened,  and 
which  his  own  uncompromising  temperamont  made  him  slow 
to* abandon.  He  would  have  found  little  difficulty  in  secu- 
ring his  safety  by  flight  a  second  time,  but  having  now  put 
his  hand  fairly  to  the  plough,  having  been  the  zealous 
preacher  of  the  new  doctrines,  and  a  bishop  under  the  new 
establishment,  he  felt,  that  to  withdraw  from  the  trial,  se- 
vere as  it  was  likely  to  prove,  would  be  a  dereliction  of  du- 
ty, and  he  determined  to  brave  the  danger,  come  what  might. 


252  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

He  ran  the  gauntlet  of  the  inquisitional  council,  as  Ro- 
gers had  done  before  him,  being  tried  by  the  same  ques- 
tions, and  taunted  by  the  same  scoffs,  only, it  is  remarkable, 
that  Tonstall,  Bishop  of  Durham,  is  said  to  have  called  him 
"  beast,"  in  consideration  of  his  marriage;  a  reproach  which, 
as  it  was  scarcely  consistent  with  TonstalFs  general  deport- 
ment to  cast  in  his  teeth,  he  being  a  good  man,  and  a  foe  to 
persecution,  scarcely  allowing  it  to  enter  his  own  diocese, 
may  be  probably  assigned  to  the  humane  motive,  which  Ful- 
ler suggests,  that  he  wishsd  to  bark  the  more,  in  order  that 
he  might  be  at  liberty  to  bite  the  less;*  and  by  affecting 
rudeness  of  speech,  qualify  himself  for  being  merciful  with- 
out suspicion.  Hooper,  however,  was  not  to  be  saved.  He 
was  married — he  would  .not  separate  himself  from  his  wife; 
and  he  did  not  believe  in  the  corporal  presence  in  the  sacra- 
ment; for  these  heresies  he  was  deprived  and  condemned. 
It  was  necessary  to  remove  him  from  the  Clink,  a  prison 
not  far  from  the  church  of  St.  Mary  Overies,  where  sentence 
was  passed  upon  him,  to  Newgate,  one  of  the  worst  of  the 
bad  prisons  of  those  times;  and  the  precautions  observed 
show  the  extreme  unpopularity  of  these  sanguinary  mea- 
sures, and  the  blindness  of  a  government  which  could  adopt 
them.  He  was  kept  till  dark,  and  then  led  by  a  sheriff,  at- 
tended by  bills  and  weapons,  through  the  city,  the  sergeants 
going  forward  to  put  oat  the  candles  of  the  costermongers, 
who  in  those  days  sat  in  the  streets;  the  people,  nevertheless 
came  in  spite  of  these  precautions  to  their  doors  with  lights 
to  salute  him  as  he  passed,  and  to  strengthen  his  resolution 
by  their  cordial  prayers.  On  the  night  after  Rogers'  mar- 
tyrdom in  Smithfield,  he  was  informed  by  his  keeper  that 
he  was  himself  shortly  about  to  die,  not  in  Smithfield,  how- 
ever, but  at  Gloucester,  amongst  the  people  over  whom  he 

*  Fuller's  Church  History,  b.  viii.  20.     See  also  Fox,  iii.  171. 


HOOPER.  253 

had  been  pastor.  At  this  he  rejoiced  greatly;  and  sending 
for  his  boots,  spurs,  and'cloak,  that  he  might  be  in  readiness 
for  the  morrow,  prepared  himself  to  set  out  with  his  guard 
before  break  of  day  for  the  scene  of  his  sufferings.  There  he 
arrived  on. the  third  evening  after  his  departure  from  London, 
amidst  the  tears  and  salutations  of  a  multitude  of  persons,  who 
came  out  to  meet  him  by  the  way.  The  evening  before  his  ex- 
ecution he  retired  early  to  rest,  and  having  slept  one  sleep 
soundly,  passed  the  remainder  of  the  night  in  prayer.  The 
morrow  was  market-day — the  country  people  flocked  in;  the 
boughs  of  an  elm'  tree,  near  which  the  stake  was  fixed,  were 
loaded  with  spectators;  and  over  the  college  gate,  which 
commanded  a  view  of  the  spot,  stood  a  company  of  priests. 
He  had  scarcely  kneeled  down  to  recommend  his  soul  to 
God,  for  the  last  time  on  earth,  when,  by  a  refinement  of 
cruelty  common  in  those  bloody  days,  a  box  was  brought 
and  laid  before  him  on  a  stool,  containing  his  pardon  if  he 
would  still  turn  in  the  eleventh  hour.  But,  he  crying  out 
again  and  again,  "If  you  love  my  soul,  away  with  it," 
there  remained,  it  was  said,  no  remedy  but  to  despatch  him 
quickly.  Then  did  he  strip  himself  to  the  shirt;  and  a 
pound  of  gunpowder  being  placed  between  his  legs,  and 
another  under  either  arm,  he  mounted  upon  a  high  bench, 
himself  tall,  and  being  bound  to  the  stake  by  an  iron  hoop 
round  his  middle,  he  awaited  his  end.  But  the  faggots  were 
greeii,  and  kindled  slowly;  and  the  wind,  which  was  high, 
drove  the  flame  from  him,  so  that  he  was  scorched  only, 
till  dry  wood  was  brought,  but  still  in  small  quantities;  and 
for  a  long  while  nothing  but  the  lower  extremities  was  con- 
sumed; and  he  cried  out  in  his  protracted  agony,  "  For 
God's  sake,  good  people,  let  me  have  more  fire!"  It  was 
not  till  a  third  fire  had  been  lighted  that  the  gunpowder  ex- 
ploded: but  neither  did  this  end  his  suffering;  for  he  still 
continued  to  pray  in  a  loud  voice,  "  Lord  Jesus,  have  mercy 
22 


254  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

upon  me!"  At  length  his  tongue  became  swollen  so  that 
he  could  not  articulate;  and  one  of  his  arms  dropped  off; 
and  after  he  had  thus  lingered  three  quarters  of  an  hour,  in 
all  the  bitterness  of  the  bitterest  of  deaths,  he  bowed  for- 
wards and  yielded  up  his  life. 

None  of  all  the  martyrs  appear  to  have  died  so  hardly  as 
Hooper;  none,  perhaps,  to  have  left  a  stronger  impression 
upon  the  minds  of  their  hearers;  to  which  the  austerity  of 
his  doctrines  and  severity  of  his  death  alike  contributed. 
His  scruples  and  his  tenets  seem  to  have  been  scattered  far 
and  wide  over  the  dioceses  of  Gloucester  and  Bristol,  to 
come  again  after  many  days;  for  when  Cheny  some  years 
afterwards  was  appointed  to  these  sees,  he  being,  as  was 
supposed,  a  Lutheran,  and  being  certainly  a  lover  of  cere- 
monial, found  it  impossible  to  reconcile  the  sentiments  of 
his  clergy  with  his  own;  and,  fretted  by  constant  conflict, 
became  desirous  to  resign  a  charge,  of  which,  indeed,  he 
was  eventually  deprived  by  the  archbishop,  and  to  return 
to  a  life  of  more  privacy  and  peace.* 

But  of  the  many  beautiful  histories  in  which  Fox  abounds, 
none  is  more  beautiful  than  that  of  Rowland  Taylor,  rector 
of  Hadley.  Though  a  mere  country  parson,  (for  he  had 
quitted  the  household  of  Cranmer,  to  whom  he  was  chap- 
lain; in  order  to  reside  upon  his  benefice,) — possessed, 
however,  of  a  high  spirit  and  popular  talents — he  seems  to 
have  taken  a  lead  in  his  own  country;  and  following  in  the 
wake  of  Bilney,  who  had  preached  in  the  same  quarters, 
contributed  to  render  Suffolk  what  we  have  already  de- 
scribed it — the  soil  in  which  the  Reformation  took  the 
kindliest  root.  The  collateral  effect  of  his  influence  and 
example  may  be  thought,  perhaps,  to  be  discovered  in  a 
circumstance  which  comes  out  quite  incidentally  in  the  an- 

*  Strype's  Annals,  p.  246. 


ROWLAND  TAYLOR.  255 

nals  of  that  period;  that  one  Dr.  Drakes,  who  was  after- 
wards burnt  at  Smithfield,  and  one  Yeomans  at  Norwich, 
had  both,  we  find,  been  connected  with  Rowland  Taylor; 
the  former  having  been  made  deacon  through  his  means,* 
the  latter  having  been  his  curate  at  Hadley.f     We  will  not 
enter  into  all  the  details  of  this  thrice-told  tale  of  sorrow — 
his  pastoral  faithfulness — his  successful  teaching,  so  that 
his  parish  was  remarkable  for  its  knowledge  of  the  Word 
of  God — his  efforts  to   introduce  to  each  other  rich  and 
poor,  by  taking  with  him  in  his  visits  to  the  latter  some  of 
the  more   wealthy   cloth-makers,  that  they  might  become 
acquainted  with  their  neighbours'  -wants,  and  thus  be  led 
to  minister  to  their  relief — his  bold  defiance  of  the  Catholic 
priest  whom  he  found   in  possession  of  his   church,   sur- 
rounded by  armed  men,    and  saying   mass — his  reply  to 
John  Hull,  the  old  servant  who  accompanied  him  to  Lon- 
don when  he  was  summoned  there  before  Gardiner,  and 
who  would  fain  have  persuaded  him  to  fly — his  frank  and 
fearless  carriage  before  his  judges — his  mirth  at  the  ludi- 
crous  apprehensions   he   inspired   into  Bonner's  chaplain, 
who  cautioned  the  bishop,  when  performing  the  ceremony 
of  his  degradation,  not  to  strike  him  on  the  breast  with  his 
crosier  staff,  seeing  that  he  would  sure  strike  again — his 
charge  to  his  little  boy,  when  he  supped  with  him  in  pri- 
son before  his  removal  to  Hadley,  not  to  forsake  his  mother 
when  she  waxed  old,  but  to  see  that  she  lacked  nothing; 
for  which  God  would  bless  him,  and  give  him  long  life  on 
earth  and  prosperity — his  coming  forth  by  night  to  set  out 
upon  his  last  journey;  his  wife,  daughter,  and  an  orphan 
foster-child  watching  all  night  in  St.  Botolph's  church-porch, 
to  catch  a  sight  of  him  as  he  passed — their  cries  when  they 
heard  his  company  approach,  it  being  very  dark;  his  touch- 

*  Fox,  ill.  681.  t  Strype's  Cranmer,  p.  274. 


256  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

ing  farewell  to  them,  and  his  wife's  promise  to  meet  him 
again  at  Hadley — his  taking  his  boy  before  him  on  the 
horse  on  which  he  rode,  John  Hull  lifting  him  up  in 
his  arms — his  blessing  the  child;  and  delivering  him  again 
to  John  Hull,  saying,  "  Farewell!  John  Hull,  the  faithful- 
lest  servant  that  man  ever  had;" — the  pleasantries,  partak- 
ing, indeed,  of  the  homely  simplicity  of  the  times,  with 
which  he  occasionally  beguiled  the  way — the  joy  he  ex- 
pressed at  hearing  that  he  was  to  pass  through  Hadley,  and 
see  yet  once  before  he  died  the  flock  whom,  God  knew,  he 
had  most  heartily  loved  and  truly  taught — his  encounter  with 
the  poor  man  who  waited  for  him  at  the  foot  of  the  bridge 
with  five  small  children,  crying  "  God  help  and  succour 
thee!  as  thou  hast  many  a  time  succoured  me  and  mine;" — 
his  inquiry,  when  he  came  to  the  last  of  the  alms-houses, 
after  the  blind  man  and  woman  that  dwelt  there;  and  his 
throwing  his  glove  through  the  window  for  them  with  what 
money  in  it  he  had  left — his  calling  one  Soyce  to  him  out 
of  the  crowd  on  Aldham  Common,  lo  pull  off  his  boots  and 
take  them  for  his  labour,  seeing  that  "he  had  long  looked 
for  them;" — his  exclaiming  last  of  all  with  a  loud  voice,  as 
though  the  moral  of  his  life  was  conveyed  in  those  parting 
words,  "  Good  people,  I  have  taught  you  nothing  but  God's 
Holy  Word,  and  those  lessons  that  I  have  taken  out  of  God's 
blessed  book,  the  Holy  Bible;  and  I  am  come  hither  this 
day  to  seal  it  with  my  blood;" — these,  and  other  incidents 
of  the  same  story,  combine  so  many  touches  of  tender- 
ness with  so  much  firmness  of  purpose — so  many  domestic 
charities  with  so  much  heroism — such  cheerfulness  with 
such  disaster,  that  if  there  is  any  character  calculated  to 
call  forth  all  the  sympathies  of  our  nature,  it  is  that  of  Row- 
land Taylor.  God's  blessing  is  still  generally  seen  on  the 
third  and  fourth  generation  of  them  that  love  him;  and  if 
Rowland  could  have  beheld  the  illustrious  descendant  which 


RIDLEY.  257 

Providence  was  preparing  for  him  in  Jeremy  Taylor,  the  an- 
tagonist of  the  Church  of  Rome,  able  after  his  own  heart's 
content — the  first  and  best  advocate  of  toleration — the  great- 
est promoter  of  practical  piety  that  has  ever,  perhaps,  lived 
amongst  us — he  might  have  humbly  imagined  that  God  had 
not  forgotten  this  his  gracious  dispensation  in  his  own  case; 
and  had  approved  his  martyrdom,  by  raising  from  his  ashes 
a  spirit  more  than  worthy  of  his  name. 

The  fate  and  fortunes  of  Cranmer,  Ridley,  and  Latimer 
were  so  closely  united  that  their  history  is  a^  common  one. 
Of  Cranmer's  rise  and  advancement  mention  has  been  made 
already.  Ridley  was  well  born  coming  of  a  good  stock  in 
Northumberland;  his  reputation  was  great  in  Cambridge, 
where  he  was  first  a  student  and  then  the  Master  of  Pem- 
broke College.  Henry  promoted  him  to  the  see  of  Rochester; 
and  Edward  translated  him  to  that  of  London.  He  was  a 
man  of  vast  reading,  ready  memory,  wise  of  counsel,  deep 
of  wit,  and  very  politic  in  all  his  proceedings.  Though 
abundantly  kind  to  his  kinsfolks,  he  declared  even  to  his 
brother  and  sister,  that  doing  evil  they  should  look  for  no- 
thing at  his  hand;  such  was  his  integrity;  and  when  the 
mother  of  Bonner  was  his  near  neighbour  at  Fulham,  he 
gave  her  a  welcome  to  his  table  (an  attention  which  was 
afterwards  but  ill  returned  by  her  son),  assigning  to  her  a 
chair  of  her  own;  so  that  even  when  the  king's  council 
-dined  with  him,  he  did  not  suffer  her  to  be  removed,  say- 
ing, "  By  your  Lordships'  favour,  this  place,  by  right  of 
custom,  is  for  my  mother  Bonner;"  such  was  his  tenderness. 
His  life,  which  is  probably  a  picture  of  that  of  the  higher 
ecclesiastics  of  his  time,  was  conducted  with  great  regu- 
larity. Every  morning,  as  soon  as  he  had  put  on  his  clothes, 
he  prayed  in  his  chamber  for  half  an  hour;  thence  to  busi- 
ness or  to  study  till  ten;  after  which  he  assembled  his  house- 
hold for  family  prayers;  dinner  came  next,  which,  with 
22* 


258  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

chess,  engaged  him  for  an  hour;  when,  if  there  were  no 
suitors,  or  matters  to  be  transacted  abroad,  he  returned  to 
his  study  till  five;  evening  prayers  followed,  then  supper 
and  his  favourite  chess;  again  his  books  till  eleven  o'clock, 
and  so  his  private  devotions  performed  as  in  the  morning, 
he  ended  his  peaceful  day.  Of  the  chapters  which  he  se- 
lected for  the  instruction  of  his  own  people  (of  whom,  says 
Fox,  he  was  marvellous  careful),  the  13th  chapter  of  the 
Acts  of  the  Apostles,  and  the  101st  Psalm,  were  the  most 
often  in  his  mouth.  In  his  public  character  Ridley  was, 
doubtless,  one  of  the  brightest  lights  of  the  Reformation, 
yet  not  such  as  to  extinguish  Cranmer,*  though  some  have 
so  accounted  him,  contrary  to  his  own  modest  testimony  to 
the  superior  knowledge  of  the  Archbishop,  "  who  passed 
him,"  said  he,  "  no  less  than  the  learned  master  the  young 
scholar,"  and  in  spite  of  the  numerous  acknowledged  pro- 
ductions of  Cranmer,  and  the  little  we  know  of  Ridley  be- 
yond his  Examinations,  Treatises,  and  Letters  (all  most 
able  indeed),  preserved  in  the  pages  of  Fox. 

Latimer  was  a  man  of  more  humble  birth  than  the  two 
former,  being  a  small  farmer's  son  at  Thurcaston,  in  Lieces- 
tershire,  a  condition  in  life  which  qualified  him,  perhaps,  so 
eminently  for  spreading  the  doctrines  of  the  Reformation 
amongst  the  people,  whose  tastes  and  phraseology,  as  well 
as  their  failings  and  faults,  he,  of  all  the  leading  Reformers, 
seems  to  have  best  understood;  and  he  was  accordingly  ho- 
noured by  the  title  of  the  Apostle  of  England.  Fastidious 
hearers  would  indeed  find  much  io  shock  them  in  the  home- 
ly speech  and  extravagant  jokes  of  Latimer,  though  proba- 
bly in  this  he  did   but  follow  an  example  which  the  friars 

*  See,  however,  Fox,  iii.  427;  where  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester  is 
made  to  say,  Latimer  leaned  to  Cranmer,  Cranmer  to  Ridley,  and  Rid- 
ley to  the  singularity  of  his  own  wit.  But  it  was  the  policy  of  the 
Catholic  party  to  run  down  Cranmer. 


LATIMER.  259 

had  set  him;  but  the  earnest  sincerity  of  the  man  overcame 
all  obstacles,  and  recommended  him  to  the  court,  as  well 
as  to  the  country,  for  an  engine  of  the  Reformation  power- 
ful beyond  most  others.  The  see  of  Worcester,  to  wliich 
he  was  elected  by  Henry,  he  took  the  first  opportunity  of 
resigning;  an  opportunity  given  him  by  the  Act  of  the  Six 
Articles,  and  when  he  might  have  resumed  it  he  held  back, 
living  with  Cranmer  at  Lambeth,  as  a  private  individual,  ac- 
cessible to  suitors,  whose  cases  he  forwarded  to  the  primate; 
greeted  by  the  people  still  with  the  title  of  Lord,  for  they  re- 
joiced to  pay  him  honour;  and  the  favourite  even  of  the  boys" 
in  the  streets,  who  cheered  him  as  he  approached  his  ever 
popular  pulpit  with  some  hearty  word  of  encouragement  to 
say  on.  Still  there  was  something  in  Latimer  (even  in 
those  times,  when  it  was  not  much  the  practice  of  the 
preacher  to  go  bridle  in  hand,)  which  seems  to  have  stamped 
him  as  a  humourist  amongst  his  unrefined  contemporaries; 
and  a  few  words  of  advice  which  Cranmer  gives  him  in  a 
letter  written  when  he  was  about  to  make  his  first  essay  as 
a  preacher  at  court — a  situation  to  which  the  archbishop  had 
himself  introduced  him — indicate  that  he  looked  upon  the 
experiment  not  without  some  lit.tle  apprehension  for  the  re- 
sult. *'  Overpass  or  omit,"  says  the  discreet  adviser,  "-all 
manner  of  speech  either  apertly  or  suspiciously  sounding 
against  any  special  man's  facts,  manners,  or  sayings,  to  the 
intent  your  audience  have  none  occasion  thereby,  namely, 
to  slander  your  adversaries,  which  would  seem  to  many  that 
you  were  void  of  charity,  and  so  much  the  more  unworthy 
to  occupy  that  room.  Nevertheless,  if  such  occasion  be 
given  by  the  word  of  God,  let  none  offence  or  suspicion  be 
unreprehended,  especially  if  it  be  generally  spoken,  without 
affection.  Furthermore,  I  would  that  you  should  so  study 
to  comprehend  your  matter,  that  in  any  condition  you  stand 
no  longer  in  the  pulpit  than  an  hour  or  an  hour  and  half  at 


260  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

the  most,  for  by  long  expense  of  time,  the  King  and  the 
Queen  (Anne  Bullen)  shall  peradventure  wax  so  weary  at 
the  beginning  that  they  shall  have  small  delight  to  continue 
throughout  with  you  to  the  end."* 

Ridley  and  Latimer,  like  Cranmer,  had  favoured  the  usur- 
pation ot  the  Lady  Jane;  and,  accordingly,  were  also  sent 
to  the  Tower  on  the  accession  of  Mary.  The  charge 
against  them,  however,  was  commuted  (as  we  have  seen 
was  the  case  with  the  archbishop),  and  they  were  proceed- 
ed against  as  heretics.  The  tower  being  full — for  the  pri- 
sons were  then  the  chambersot  the  prophets — the  three 
friends,  together  with  Bradford,  were  thrust  into  the  same 
room,  where  they  read  over  the  New  Testament,  and  con- 
firmed each  other  in  the  faith  for  which  they  were  to  die. 
Here  they  remained  about  six  months,  during  which  time 
disputations  (such  as  they  were)  were  held  in  the  convoca- 
tion on  some  of  the  controverted  points;  from  which,  how- 
ever, the  reformers  in  prison,  who  were  the  most  learned  of 
the  body,  were  excluded:  whilst  [the  few  of  that  per- 
suasion who  were  present,  and  who  dared  to  advocate  their 
principles,  were  clamoured  down,  till  at  length  the  Roman- 
ists, awakened  to  some  sense  of  shame  at  the  scandal  of  a 
victory  which  they  won  by  confining  or  silencing  their  op- 
ponents, agreed  to  transfer  the  debate  to  Oxford;  there  to  be 
conducted  by  the  ex-bishops  on  the  one  hand,  and  certain 
commissioners  from  both  universities  on  the  other;  and  for 
Oxford,  Cranmer,  Ridley,  and  Latimer  set  out  from  the 
Tower,  on  the  8th  of  March,  1554.  Here  they  were  con- 
signed to  a  prison  called  Bocardo — a  building  which  it  is 
matter  of  regret  it  should  have  been  needful  to  pull  down  not 
more  than  about  sixty  years  ago;  and,  on  the  14th  of  April, 

*  Mr.  Todd's  Life  of  Cranmer,  i.  140,  where  this  letter  is  printed 
from  the  Lansdowne  MSS, 


LATIMER.  261 

they  were  brought  out  together  to  St.  Mary's  church,  when 
the  questions  submitted  to  them  were  these: — 

1.  Whether  the  natural  body  of  Christ  was  really  in  the 
sacrament? 

2.  Whether  any  other  substance  did  remain  after  the 
words  of  consecration,  than  the  body  of  Christ? 

3.  Whether  in  the  mass  there  was  a  sacrifice  and  propi- 
tiation for  the  sins  of  quick  and  dead? 

The  dispute  was  then  fixed  for  Cranmer  on  the  16th,  for 
Ridley  on  the  17th,  and  for  Latimeron  the  18th  of  the  same 
month. 

In  the  management  of  this  famous  argument,  which  was 
conducted  by  syllogism  and  in  the  schools,  we  have  an  ex- 
cellent example  of  the  ratiocinations  of  those  days.  Cer- 
tainly, the  Roman  Catholic  doctors  displayed  no  lack  either 
of  policy  or  acuteness;  but  it  was  the  policy  of  men  aware 
of  their  weakness,  and  therefore  slow  to  measure  their 
strength;  antl  the  acuteness  of  sophists  whose  object  it  was 
rather  to  perplex  the  adversary,  than  to  unravel  the  truth;  it 
was  one  of  those  cowardly  conflicts,  "  ubi  tu  caedis,  ego  va- 
pulo  tantum;"  where  one  strikes  and  the  other  must  be  con- 
tent to  be  smitten — the  popish  disputants  putting  objections 
""to  the  reformers,  but  refusing  to  appoint  a  second  meeting 
in  which  the  reformers  might  retaliate,  so  Cranmer  com- 
plains to  the  council — where  a  single  defendant  is  assailed 
by  a  multitude  of  discordant  voices,  lifted  up  against  him  to- 
gether— and  where,  at  intervals,  the  partial  prolocutor  would 
translate  into  English,  after  a  fashion  of  Jiis  own,  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  unlearned  spectators,  some  passage  in  the  dialogue 
which  served  as  a  signal  for  hisses,  peals  of  laughter,  aud 
shouts  of  "Vicit  Veritas!"  to  the  extinction  of  all  fair  argu- 
ment, and  the  confusion  of  all  modest  men.  "I  have  but 
one  tongue,"  cries  Ridley,  "I  cannot  answer  at  once  to  you 
all."    "  O  what  unright  dealing  is  this!"  he  again  exclaims, 


262  •  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

on  hearing  the  perverted  quotations  which  he  was  not  per- 
mitted to  expose.  Whilst  poor  Latimer,  faint,  and  afraid 
to  drink  for  vomiting;  making  an  appeal  moreover  to  Wes- 
ton, enough  to  touch  a  stone;  "  Good  master,  I  pray  be 
good  to  an  old  man:  you  may,  if  it  please  God,  be  once  as 
old  as  I  am;  you  may  come  to  this  age  and  this  debility," 
is  subjected  to  clamour  still  more  inhuman;  for  he  disputed 
in  English,  and  was  therefore  better  understood.  "  Al- 
though," says  he,  "  I  have  spoken  in  my  time  before  two 
kings  more  than  once,  two  or  three  hours  together  without 
interruption,  now  (that  I  may  speak  the  truth  by  your 
leave)  I  cannot  be  suffered  to  declare  my  mind  before  you; 
no,  not  by  the  space  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  without 
snatches,  revijings.  checks,  rebukes,  taunts,  such  as  I  have 
not  felt  the  like  in  such  an  audience  all  my  hfe  long." 

The  glory  of  this  contest  (as  we  find  it  detailed  in  Fox)* 
certainly  rests  with  Ridley,  rather  than  with  Cranmer,  who 
had  probably  less  nerve,  or  Latimer  who  had  less  learning. 
He  adheres  to  one  line  of  argument — that  of  explaining  all  the 
authorities  advanced  against  him  of  the  spiritual  presence 
only;  and  this  he  does  with  a  knowledge  of  his  subject,  as 
well  as  a  readiiiess  in  applying  it;  such  as  argue  an  extent  of 
reading,  a  tenacity  of  mer\iory,  and  a  presence  of  mind, 
quite  wonderful.  Be  they  passages  from  Scripture,  from 
fathers,  or  from  the  canons  of  councils,  with  which  he  is 
plied,  they  appear  to  be  the  last  things  which  he  had  ex- 
amined, so  that  a  false  reading,  or  a  false  gloss,  or  a  packed 
quotation,  never  escapes  him;  and  either  a  minute  knowledge 

*  Copies  of  this  disputation  were  abroad  in  Ridley's  life;  for  Grindal 
in  a  letter  to  liim,  dated  Frankfort,  the  6th  of  May,  1555,  speaks  of 
having  seen  such. — Strype''s  Life  of  Grindal^  pp.  12.  18.  It  seems 
that  Cranmer  and  Ridley  had  committed  all  that  they  could  remember 
to  writing;  and  that  Grindal  had  compared  their  account  with  that  of 
the  notaries,  and  found  the  two  agreeing  in  the  main. 


REFORMERS  CONDEMNED  AS  HERETICS.  263 

of  an  author's  text,  or  (what  is  often  quite  as  certain  a  proof 
of  scholarship)  an  accurate  perception  of  the  general  spirit 
which  influences  him,  enables  him  to  wrest  the  weapon  from 
the  hands  of  his  adversaries,  and  to  turn  it  against  them- 
selves. "If  there  was  an  Arian,"  exclaimed  one  of  them, 
in  the  bitterness  of  defeat,  "  which  had  that  subtle  wit  that 
you  have,  he  might  soon  shift  off  the  authority  of  the 
Sriptures  and  fathers."  All,  however,  was  to  little  purpose 
before  judges  who,  like  Virgil's  Rhadamantlius,  were  bent 
upon  punishing  first  and  convicting  afterwards.  Sentence 
was  passed  in  St.  Mary's  Church,  where  Cranmer,  Ridley, 
and  Latimer  were  convened;  in  the  course  of  it,  they  were 
asked  by  the  commissioners  whether  they  would  turn  or 
no;  but  they  bade  them  "  read  on  in  the  name  of  God,  for 
that  they  were  not  minded  to  turn;  and  so  were  they  con- 
demned all  three." 

It  was  intended  to  act  the  same  scene  over  again  at  Cam- 
bridge, where  Hooper,  Bradford,  Taylor,  Philpot,  and  some 
others  not  yet  put  to  death,  were  to  be  baited;  but  they  had 
received  timely  information  of  the  treatment  of  their  com- 
panions at  the  sister  university,  and  refused  to  dispute,  ex- 
cept in  writing,  or  before  the  Queen,  or  either  house  of  par- 
liament, and,  accordingly,  the  tyrannous  scheme  was  in  this 
instance  abortive. 

But  though  condemnation  of  heresy  was  now  passed  upon 
these  three  leaders  of  the  Reformation,  the  execution  of  the 
sentence  was  suspended,  in  the  case  of  Ridley  and  Latimer 
till  the  October  of  the  year  following,  a  period  of  eighteen 
months;  and  in  the  case  of  Cranmer,  for  five  months  longer 
still;  the  two  former  being  committed  to  the  custody  of 
private  individuals,  the  latter  being  still  kept  in  Bocardo. 
The  interval,  however,  was  a  busy  one;  the  sentence- was 
to  be  confirmed  by  the  Queen  in  council;  but  the  law  itself 
was  not  determinate;  and  the  old  penal  statutes  (as  we  have 


264  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

said)  were  restored.  Probably  this  measure  would  have 
been  recommended  by  such  advisers  as  Mary  had  about  her 
under  any  circumstances;  but  her  marriage  with  Philip, 
which  was  now  concluded,  blew  up  the  flames;  and  the 
bloody  acts  were  passed  and  carried  into  eflfect,  it  was  under- 
stood, with  the  greater  severity,  from  a  superstitious  opinion 
entertained  by  the  Queen,  who  now  fancied  herself  pregnant, 
that  her  safe  delivery  could  not  be  effected  so  long  as  a 
heretic  was  suff'ered  to  live.  But,  trying  as  must  have  been 
the  suspense  to  these  brave  spirits  in  prison,  it  was  not 
without  its  benefit  to  the  cause  for  which  they  were  con- 
tent to  suffer;  for  now  it  was  that  they  had  leisure  to  write 
those  numerous  letters  of  counsel,  of  encouragement,  and  of 
comfort,  (like  St.  Paul  in  his  bonds,)  to  the  faithful  brethren 
both  individuals  and  societies,  which  are  said  to  have  for- 
warded the  Reformation  beyond  most  other  things:  a  fact 
at  which  none  will  be  surprised  who  will  peruse  tliose 
which  Fox  has  preserved  to  us;  and  above  all  Ridley's 
Letter,  entitled  his  last  farewell  to  all  his  true  and  faithful 
friends  in  God,"  which  has  been  ever  esteemed  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  pieces  of  writing  contained  in  our  language. 

"  As  a  man  minding  to  take  a  far  journey,"  says  he, 
"  and  to  depart  from  his  familiar  friends,  commonly  and 
naturally  hath  a  desire  to  bid  his  friends  farewell  before  his 
departure;  so  likewise  now,  I,  looking  daily  when  I  should 
be  called  to  depart  hence  from  you,  bid  you  all,  my  dear 
brethren  and  sisters  in  Christ,  that  dwell  upon  the  earth, 
after  such  manner  as  I  can,  farewell. 

"  Farewell,  my  dear  brother,  George  Shipside,  whom  I 
have  ever  found  faithful,  trusty,  and  loving  in  all  states  and 
conditions,  and  now  in  the  time  of  my  cross,  over  all  other 
to  me  most  friendly  and  steadfast,  and  that  which  he  liked 
me  best  over  all  things,  in  God's  cause  ever  hearty. 

"  Farewell,  my  dear  Sister  Alice,  his  wife.     I  am  glad 


Ridley's  farewell.  265 

to  hear  of  thee,  that  thou  dost  take  Christ's  Cross,  which 
is  laid  now  (blessed  be  God!)  both  on  thy  back  and  mine, 
in  good  part.  Thank  thou  Goil  that  hath  given  thee  a  godly 
and,  loving  husband:  see  thou  honour  and  obey  him  accord- 
ing to  God's  law.  Honour  thy  niother-in-law,  his  mother 
and  all  those  that  pertain  unto  him,  being  ready  to  do  them 
good,  as  it  shall  lie  in  thy  power. 

"  Farewell,  my  dearly  beloved  brother  John  Ridley,  of 
the  Waltown,  and  you  my  gentle  and  loving  sister  Elizabeth, 
whom,  besides  the  natural  league  of  amity,  your  tender  love 
which  you  were  said  ever  to  bear  towards  me  above  the  rest 
of  your  brethern,  both  bind  me  to  love.  My  mind  was  to 
have  acknowledged  this  your  loving  affection,  and  to  have 
acquitted  it  with  deeds,  and  not  with  words  alone.  Your 
daughter  Elizabeth  I  bid  farewell,  whom  I  love  for  the 
meek  and  gentle  spirit  that  God  hath  given  her,  which  is  a 
precious  thing  in  the  sight  of  God. 

*'  Farewell,  my  beloved  sister  of  Unthank,  with  all  your 
children,  nephews,  and  nieces.  Since  the  departing  of 
my  brother  Hugh,  my  mind  was  to  have  been  unto  them 
instead  of  their  father;  but  the  Lord  God  must  and  will  be 
their  Father,  if  they  would  love  and  fear  him,  and  live  in 
the  trade  of  his  law." 

He  then  goes  on  to  take  leave  of  other  kindred  more 
distantly  related  to  him,  and  to  declare  the  duty  which  com- 
pelled him  to  lay  down  his  life.  He  next  reviews  and  de- 
fends the  acts  of  Edward's  Reformation,  to  which  he  had 
been  a  party;  laments  that  the  wild  boar  should  have  rooted 
them' all  up;  contrasts  the  present  with  the  past;  and  re- 
turning once  more  to  his  sorrowful  leave-taking,  "  To 
whom,"  says  he,  with  feelings  far  more  to  be  envied  than 
those  of  Gibbon  or  Gray,  "  to  whom,  after  my  kinsfolk, 
should  I  offer  farewell,  before  the  University  of  Cambridge, 
where  I  have  dwelt  longer,  found  more  faithful  and  hearty 
23 


266  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

friends,  received  more  benefits  (the  benefits  of  my  natural 
parents  only  excepted,)  than  ever  I  did  in  mine  own  native 
country  wherein  I  was  born? 

"  Farewell,  therefore,  Cambridge,  my  loving  mother  and 
tender  nurse!  If  I  should  not  acknowledge  thy  manifold 
benefits,  yea,  if  I  should  not  for  thy  benefits  at  least  love 
thee  again,  truly  I  were  to  be  counted  too  ungrateful  and 
unkind.  What  benefits  hadst  thou  ever,  that  thou  usest  to 
give  and  bestow  upon  thy  best  beloved  children,  that  thou 
thoughtest  too  good  for  me?  ....  First  to  be  scholar,  then 
to  be  fellow,  and  after  my  departure  from  thee,  thou  calledst 
me  again  to  a  mastership  of  a  right  worshipful  college.  I 
thank  thee,  my  loving  mother,  for  all  this  thy  kindness; 
and  I  pray  God  that  his  laws,  and  the  sincere  Gospel  of 
Christ,  may  ever  be  truly  taught  and  faithfully  learned  in 
thee. 

*'  Farewell,  Pembroke  Hall,  of  late  mine  own  college, 
my  care  and  my  charge!  What  case  thou  art  now  in,  God 
knoweth;  I  know  not  well.  Thou  wast  ever  named  since 
I  knew  thee,  which  is  now  thirty  years  ago,  to  be  studious, 
well  learned,  and  a  great  setter  forth  of  Christ's  Gospel,  and 
of  God's  true  word:  so  I  found  thee,  and,  blessed  be  God, 
so  I  left  thee  indeed.  Woe  is  me  for  thee,  mine  own  dear 
college,  if  ever  thou  sufl'er  thyself  by  any  means  to  be 
brought  from  that  trade.  In  thy  orchard  (the  walls,  huts, 
and  trees,  if  they  could  speak,  would  bear  me  witness)  I 
learned  without  book  almost  all  Paul's  Epistles;  yea,  and 
I  ween  all  the  Canonical  Epistles,  save  only  the  Apoca- 
lypse. Of  which  study,  although  in  time  a  great  part  did 
depart  from  me,  yet  the  sweet  smell  thereof  I  trust  I  shall 
carry  with  me  into  heaven;  for  the  profit  thereof  I  think  I 
have  felt  in  all  my  lifetime  ever  after;  and  I  ween  of  late 
(whether  they  abide  now  or  no,  I  cannot  tell)  there  was 
that  did  the  like.     The  Lord  grant  that  this  zeal  and  love 


RIDLEY  S    FAREWELL.  267 

toward  that  part  of  God's  word,  whicli  is  a  key  and  true 
commentary  to  all  the  Holy  Scripture,  may  ever  abide  in 
that  college  as  long  as  the  world  shall  endure!" 

He  then  bids  farewell  to  Heme,  his  parish  in  Kent, 
charging  himself  with  being  its  debtor  for  the  doctrine  of 
the  Lord's  Supper;  God  not  having  at  that  time  revealed 
it  to  him. 

Then  he  turns  to  London,  lately  his  own  see,  the  faith- 
ful city  now  become  an  harlot,  and  exhorts  to  repentance 
the  lords  of  the  land;  reminding  them,  that  if  they  had  listened 
to  him  in  times  past,  when  he  preached  before  the  prince 
and  parliament,  much  more  should  they  now,  when,  being 
appointed  to  die,  he  could  have  no  desire  of  worldly  gain, 
and  no  other  expectation  but  shortly  to  stand,  before  the 
seat  of  his  eternal  Judge. 

Long  it  was  not,  before  his  summons  arrived.  At  the 
end  of  September  came  down  the  f\ital  commissioners  from 
Cardinal  Pole,  legate  and  archbishop  elect,  authorised  to 
accept  the  recantation  of  Ridley  and  Latimer,  or  else  to 
confirm  their  sentence  and  pronounce  their  degradation. 
The  latter  office  they  were  speedily  called  upon  to  dis- 
charge, for  the  future  martyrs  were  not  men  to  flinch  from 
the  ilames;  and  so  "  were  they  committed  to  the  secular 
powers,"  (for  the  words  of  these  ecclesiastical  death-war- 
rants were  smoother  than  oil)  "  of  them  to  receive  due 
punishment  according  to  the  tenor  of  the  temporal  laws." 

"  The  night  before  Ridley  suffered,  his  beard  was  wash- 
ed, and  his  legs;  as  he  sat  at  supper  the  same  night  at 
master  Irish's  (who  was  his  keeper),  he  bade  his  hostess, 
and  the  rest  at  the  board,  to  his  marriage:  '  For,'  saith  he, 
*  to-morrow  I  must  be  married;  and  so  showed  himself  to 
be  as  merry  as  ever  he  was  at  any  time  before;  and  wish- 
ing his  sister  at  his  marriage,  he  asked  his  brother,  sitting 
at  the  table,  whether  she  should  find  in  her  heart  to  be  there 


268  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

or  no;  and  he  answered,  *  Yea,  I  dare  say,  with  all  her 
heart;'  at  which  word  he  said  he  was  glad  to  hear  of  her 
so  much  therein.  So  at  this  talk  mistress  Irish  wept;  but 
master  Ridley  comforted  her,  and  said,  '  O,  mistress  Irish, 
you  love  me  not  now,  I  see  well  enonj^h;  for  in  that  you 
weep  it  doth  appear  you  will  not  be  at  my  marriage, 
neither  are  content  therewith.  Indeed,  you  be  not  so  much 
my  friend  as  I  thought  you  had  been:  but  quiet  yourself; 
though  my  breakfast  shall  be  somewhat  sharp  and  painful, 
yet  I  am  sure  my  supper  shall  be  more  pleasant  and  sweet.' 
When  they  arose  frpm  the  table,  his  brother  offered  him 
to  watch  all  night  with  him;  but  he  said,  'No,  no,  that 
you  shall  not;  lor  I  mind,  God  willing,  to  go  to  bed,  and 
to  sleep  as  quietly  to  night  as  ever  I  did  in  my  life.'  So 
his  brother  departed,  exhorting  him  to  be  of  good  cheer, 
and  to  take  his  cross  quietly,  for  the  reward  was  great." 

The  place  appointed  for  the  execution  was  the  ditch  on 
the  north  side  of  the  town,  over  against  Baliol  College,  and 
the  Lord  Williams  was  instructed  by  the  Queen's  letters 
to  marshal  the  householders,  and  to  see  that  no  tumult  was 
made.  Then  came  out  Ridley  in  his  black  furred  gown 
and  velvet  cap,  walking  between  the  mayor  aud  an  alder- 
man. As  he  passed  Bocardo  he  looked  up,  hoping  to  see 
Cranmer,  but  he,  says  Fox,  was  then  engaged  in  dispute 
with  one  Friar  Soto;  others,  however,  whom  Heylyn  and 
Burnet  follow,  assert  that  he  beheld  the  whole  sorrowful 
spectacle  from  the  roof  of  his  prison,  and  upon  his  knees 
begged  God  to  strengthen  his  companions  in  their  agony, 
and  to  prepare  him  for  his  own.  When  Latimer  came  up, 
(for  the  poor  old  man  made  what  speed  he  could,  but  by 
reason  of  his  years  was  slow,)  Ridley  ran  to  him  and  kiss- 
ed him,  saying,  "  Be  of  good  heart,  brother;  for  God  will 
either  assuage  the  fury  of  the  flame,  or  else  strengthen  us 
to  abide  it."     Then  they  kneeled  down  both  of  them,  and 


RIDLEY  AND  LATIMER  BURNED.  269 

prayed  very  earnestly;  and  when  they  had  risen  and  talk- 
ed together  awhile,  Dr.  Smith,  one  of  those  who  had  recant- 
ed in  Edward's  time,  and  was  now,  therefore,  the  more 
zealous,  preached  before  them,  having  the  feeling  to  choose 
for  his  text,  "  Though  I  give  my  body  to  be  burned, 
and  have  not  charity,  it  profiteth  me  nothing."  After  a 
while  being  commanded  to  make  ready,  Ridley  gave  away 
his  apparel,  a  new  groat,  some  nutmegs,  rases  of  ginger,  a 
dial,  and  such  other  things  as  he  ha-d  about  him,  the  by- 
standers but  too  happy  to  get  "  any  rag  of  him;"  and  La- 
timer, who  had  left  it  to  his  keeper  to  strip  him,  now  stood 
in  his  shroud  no  longer  the  withered  and  decrepit  old  man 
he  seemed,  but  bolt  upright,  "  as  comely  a  father  as  one 
might  lightly  behold."  Then  did  Ridley  move  the  Lord 
Williams  to  intercede  that  the  leases  which  he  had  made 
as  Bishop  of  London  might  be  confirmed;  and  when  he 
had  relieved  his  conscience  of  this  his  only  worldly  care,  a 
kindled  faggot  was  laid  at  his  feet;  Latimer,  who  was 
fastened  to  the  same  stake,  exclaiming  at  the  instant,  in 
words  that  have  become  memorable,  "  Be  of  good  comfort, 
master  Ridley,  and  play  the  man;  we  shall  this  day  light 
such  a  candle,  by  God's  grace,  in  England,  as  I  trust  shall 
never  be  put  out." 

Latimer's  sufferings  were  short:  he  received  the  flame  as 
it  were  embracing  it;  and  after  he  had  stroked  his  face 
with  his  hands  and  bathed  them  a  litde  in  the  fire,  he  soon 
died  as  it  appeared,  without  pain.  Not  so  Ridley;  the 
faggots  were  piled  up  about  him  so  that  there  was  no  vent 
for  the  flame,  which,  burning  underneath,  consumed  all  his 
lower  extremities,  he  piteously  desiring  of  the  people,  for 
Christ's  sake,  to  let  the  fire  come  unto  him.  His  brother- 
in-law,  who  meant  it  in  mercy,  heaped  upon  him  still  more 
fuel,  till  nothing  could  be  seen  of  him,  only  he  was  perceiv- 
ed to  be  leaping  up  and  down  under  the  faggots,  often  cry- 
33* 


370  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

ing  out,  "I  cannot  burn:"  at  last  one  of  the  spectators, 
pulling  off  the  wood  from  above,  made  a  way  for  the  flame 
to  escape,  towards  which  Ridley  leaned  himself  as  towards 
a  welcome  executioner,  when  the  gunpowder  with  which 
he  was  furnished,  exploded,  and  he  fell  down  dead  at  Lati- 
mer's feet. 

If  it  was  not  Gardiner's  jealousy  of  Pole,  who  was  to 
succeed  Cranmer  in  the  primacy,  which  was  the  occasion 
of  the  archbishop's  respite,*  the  plan  of  the  persecution 
was  arranged  with  consummate  sagacity.  Ridley  and  Lati- 
mer were  men  of  greater  animal  courage  than  Cranmer; 
and  would  probably  have  sustained  the  insidious  temptations 
under  which  he  sunk,  or  at  any  rate  would  have  imparted 
their  own  constancy  to  him,  had  they  all  suffered  together. 
They,  therefore  were  taken,  and  he  was  left;  for  though 
the  same  legal  form  which  served  for  the  despatch  of  the  two 
former  would  not  have  sufficed  for  the  archbishop — it  being 
reserved  for  the  pope  himself  to  take  cognizance  of  a  metro- 
politan— yet  inasmuch  as  all  the  parties  had  been  prisoners 
so  long;  ample  time  had  been  allowed  for  making  the  two 
processes  run  together,  and  thereby  bringing  the  three  bi- 
shops together  to  the  stake.  Cranmer,  however,  was  as- 
sailed by  a  separate  commission  which  issued  from  the 
pope,  as  the  other  issued  frm  the  legate,  and  since  a  part 
of  the  form  consisted  of  a  citation  to  appear  at  Rome  within 
eighty  days,  the  final  sentence  was  suspended  till  that 
period  should  have  expired.  The  citation  itself  was  an  af- 
fair of  mere  mockery,  compliance  with  it  being  impossible, 
for  Cranmer  was  still  detained  a  close  prisoner.  The  eighty 
days  at  an  end,  and  he  "  having  taken  no  care  to  appear  at 
liome"  (as  the  papal  instrument  had  the  modesty  to  word 
it),  the  pope  pronounces  him  guilty  of  heresy;  and  appoints 
Bonner  Bishop  of  London,  and  Thirlby  Bishop  of  Ely, 

*  Burnet,  ii.  315. 


CRANMER  RECANTS.  271 

commissioners  to  see  the  same  executed.  His  degradation 
having  been  effected,  attended  by  every  aggravation  of  in- 
sult which  the  ruthless  Bonner  could  devise,  he  was  deli- 
vered over  to  the  secular  power,  (the  church,  forsooth, 
shrinking  from  the  office  of  shedding  blood,)  to  be  put  to 
death.  One  attempt  more,  however,  was  yet  to  be  made 
to  shake  the  resolution  of  the  martyr;  and  Cranmer  became 
the  guest  of  the  Dean  of  Christ  Church,  and  delicate  fare  was 
provided  for  him;  and  he  played  at  bowls;  and  walked  at  his 
pleasure;  and  wily  men  distilled  their  venom  into  his  ear,  that 
the  King  and  Queen  desired  his  conversion  above  all  things; 
that  the  council  bore  him  good  will;  that  it  was  but  a  small 
thing  to  set  his  name  to  a  few  words  on  a  little  leaf  of  paper; 
that  he  was  not  so  old  but  that  many  years  yet  remained  of  lusty 
age;  that  his  notable  learning,  which  might  profit  so  many, 
should  not  be  extinguished  before  its  time;  that  if  desire  of 
life  were  nothing,  yet  that  death  is  grievous,  and  especially 
such  a  death;  till  Cranmer,  who  had  stoutly  withstood  the 
judgment-hall  and  prison-house,  the  scoffs  and  gibes  of 
merciless  men,  and  all  the  terrible  'artillery  of  persecution 
in  its  most  angry  shape,  was  not  proof  against  these  crafts 
and  subtleties  which  the  devil  or  man  wrought  against  him, 
and  so  signed  his  recantation.  "  To  conceal  this  fault," 
may  we  say  as  Fuller  does  on  the  subscription  of  Jewel, 
"  had  been  partiality;  to  excuse  it,  flattery;  to  defend  it, 
impiety;  to  insult  over  him,  cruelty;  to  pity  him,  charity; 
to  be  wary  of  ourselves  in  any  like  occasion.  Christian  dis- 
cretion." His  enemies  now  had  him  in  the  toils,  and,  to  add 
to  his  humiliation,  a  series  of  recantations  is  exacted  of  him, 
each  rising  above  the  other  in  its  demands;  some  perhaps, 
of  his  own  dictating;  the  longest  and  most  abject,  apparent- 
ly, the  wordy  composition  of  Pole;  and  whilst  these  very 
instruments  were  in  preparation,  with  a  duplicity  which  is 
a  fit  consummation  of  the  whole,  secret  orders  were  given 


272  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

by  the  Queen  to  Dr.  Cole,  provost  of  Eton  College,  to  pre- 
pare the  sermon;  and  it  was  not  till  the  day  before  his  exe- 
cution, or  even,  perhaps,  the  very  morning  of  it,  when  Cole 
visited  him  in  prison,  and  furnished  him  with  fifteen  crowns 
to  give  to  the  poor — a  dole  not  unfrequent  at  funerals  in 
those  times — that  the  eyes  of  Cranmer  were  quite  opened 
to  the  situation  in  which  he  stood,  and  he  found  himself, 
after  all  the  delusive  hopes  which  had  been  held  out  to  him, 
within  a  few  hours  of  a  dreadful  end.  Better  faith  might 
have  been  kept  with  him,  and  still  a  thirst  for  his  blood  been 
gratified;  for,  had  he  been  spared,  Cranmer  was  not  the 
man  to  have  borne  for  any  long  time  the  upbraidings  of  his 
own  conscience,  and,  like  Bilney,  he  would  have  been  soon 
driven  to  find  relief  from  sufferings  worse  than  death,  by  a 
voluntary  surrender  of  himself  to  tlie  flames:  as  it  was,  the 
wisdom  of  the  serpent,  for  which  the  church  of  Rome  was 
so  famous,  forsook  his  persecutors,  and  by  drawing  their 
bow  once  too  much,  they  snapped  it  in  their  hands; — "  Qui 
nimis  emungit  elecit  sanguinem."  Cranmer  was  now 
brought  to  St.  Mary's  'church,  preceded  by  the  mayor  and 
aldermen,  and  with  a  friar  on  either  side,  who  alternately 
repeated  certain  Psalms  as  the  procession  advanced;  and 
being  placed  on  a  stage  over  against  the  pulpit,  he  was 
there  made  to  listen  to  C<  le's  address.  This  ended,  all  the 
congregation  joined  with  him  in  prayer,  and  "  never,"  says 
a  spectator,  "  was  there  such  a  number  so  earnestly  praying 
together;  Cranmer  himself  an  image  of  sorrow,  the  dolour 
of  his  heart  bursting  out  at  his  eyes  in  plenty  of  tears,"  but 
in  other  respects  retaining  "the  quiet  and  grave  behaviour 
which  was  natural  to  him." 

Being  exhorted  to  make  a  public  confession,  that  all  suspi- 
cion of  heresy  might  be  removed  from  him,  "  I  will  doit,"said 
the  Archbishop,  "  and  that  with  a  good  will;"  whereupon  he 
rose  up  and  addressed  to  the  people  some  words  of  exhorta- 


REVOKES  HIS  RECANTATION,  AND  SUFFERS.  273 

ion,  and  then  a  summary  of  his  faith.  "And  now,"  he  contin- 
ued, "  I  come  to  the  great  thing  that  so  much  troubleth  my 
conscience,  more  than  any  thing  that  ever  I  did  or  said  in  my 
whole  life:"  then  he  revoked  his  former  recantation:  "  and 
forasmuch,"  he  added,  "  as  my  hand  offended,  writing  con- 
trary to  my  heart,  my  hand  shall  first  be  punished  therefor; 
for  may  I  come  to  the  fire,  it  shall  be  first  burned."  So 
saying,  he  was  soon  plucked  down  from  the  platform  on 
which  he  stood,  and  was  led  away  to  punishment.  He  did 
not  tarry  long  at  his  prayers;  but  putting  off  his  garments, 
all  but  his  shirt,  which  reached  to  the  ground,  his  feet  bare, 
his  head  bald,  so  that  not  one  hair  could  be  seen  upon  it, 
his  beard,  long  and  thick,  covering  his  face  with  marvellous 
gravity,  he  presented  a  spectacle  to  move  the  heart  both  of 
friend  and  foe;  at  once  the  martyr  and  the  penitent.  As 
soon  as  the  fire  began  to  burn,  he  stretched  forth  his  right 
arm,  and  thrust  his  hand  into  the  flame,  as  he  had  said,  hold- 
ing it  there  till  it  was  consumed,  and  oftentimes  repeating, 
"  This  unworthy  right  hand;"  and  as  if  ashamed  of  his 
weakness,  and  resolved  to  atone  for  it  now  by  an  heroic  con- 
tempt of  pain,  he  took  his  death  with  singular  courage,  seem- 
ing to  move  no  more  than  the  stake  to  which  he  was  bound. 

From  John  Rogers,  the  first  of  the  martyrs,  who  suffered 
on  the  4th  of  February,  1555,  to  the  five  who  were  burned 
at  Canterbury  on  the  10th  of  November,  1558,  and  were 
the  last,  two  hundred  and  twenty-seven  persons  according 
to  some  computations,  two  hundred  and  eighty-four  accord- 
ing to  others,  and  two  hundred  and  eighty-eight  according 
to  a  third  authority,  perished  in  the  flames.*  How  many 
more  might  have  been  added  to  the  number  of  victims,  had 
Mary's  life  been  spared,  it  is  impossible  to  conjecture,  but 
happily  those  days  were  shortened;  and  on  the  17th  of  No- 

*  Collier,  ii.  397.     Fox.    Strype's  Eccles.  Mem.  iii.  291. 


274  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

vember  she  herself  ended  a  reign  of  continued  disaster; 
Calais,  which  had  been  in  possession  of  the  English  since 
the  battle  of  Cregy,  and  then  reckoned  the  jewel  of  the 
crown,  lost;  and  lost  apparantly  because  the  government 
dared  not  call  a  parliament  to  provide  means  of  defence, 
such  was  its  unpopularity;*  a  heavy  debt  contracted,  less 
for  national  objects  than  to  minister  to  the  wants  of  the 
Spaniards;  an  exchequer  too  much  exhausted  to  right  itself; 
the  learned  men  in  exile;  the  universities  a  prey  to  the  same 
Spanish  rapacity;!  the  kingdom  at  large  corrupted  by 
Spanish  vices, |  and  by  a  return  to  the  law  of  clerical  celi- 
bacy;§  capital  offences  greatly  multiplied;  fifty-two  persons 
being  executed  at  Oxford  at  one  sessions;||  a  pestilence  de- 
populating the  country  to  such  a  degree  as  to  excite  fears  of 
a  French  invasion  by  reason  of  the  nation's  weakness;  for 
the  inhabitants  of  the  villages  ceased^  might  Elizabeth 
say  on  her  accession;  they  ceased  in  Israel,  until  that  I  arose, 
that  I  arose  a  mother  in  Israel;  so  that  at  length  it  was  dis- 
covered that  the  Roman  Catholic  cause,  for  which  alone 
Mary  had  lived,  and  would  have  been  content  to  die,  had 
by  her  own  measures  or  misfortunes  been  brought  to  nought; 
and  above  all,  that  the  fires  of  Smithfield  had  shed  upon  it 
a  baleful  and  disastrous  light.  Instead  of  any  attempt  being 
made  to  alter  the  succession,  though  the  queen  of  Scots  was 
at  hand  as  a  candidate  for  the  crown — of  such  pretensions, 
too,  as  would  have  been  likely  to  secure  her  some  support 
at  another  time — Elizabeth,  Protestant  as  she  was  known 
to  be,  was  advanced  to  the  throne  by  acclamation;  bonfires 

*  Burnet's  Reform,  iii.  263. 

+  Id.  iii.  275.     Strype's  Annals,  p.  133.         t  Id. 

§  Strype's  Life  of  Parker,  pp.  33,  34.  Where  there  is  given,  in  the 
Archbishop's  own  words,  a  succinct  catalogue  of  the  miseries  of  this 
reign. 

II  Bishop  Jewel's  View  of  the  Bull — towards  the  end. 


DEATH  OF  MARY.  275 

lit  in  the  streets  before  Mary  was  cold;  tables  spread  for 
merry-making  in  honour  of  her  successor;  costly  pageants 
prepared  for  her  as  she  traversed  the  city,  the  children  cry- 
ing out,  God  save  Queen  EUzabeth!*  the  moderate  revolted 
from  a  religion  which  spake  of  peace,  but  had  shed  blood 
upon  the  earth  like  water;  and  all  parties  weary  of  a  reign 
of  terror  under  which  every  man's  safety,  to  whatever  party 
he  belonged,  was  only  upon  sufferance. 

t  Bishop  Jewel's  View  of  the  Bull — towards  the  end. 


276 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

ELIZABETH. HER    ACCESSION. HER      CAUTION. REFORMA- 
TION   AGAIN    TRIUMPHANT.-— RETURN    OF    THE    EXILES. 

JEWEL.— INJUNCTIOMS     OF    ELIZABETH     COMPARED      WITH 

THOSE    OF    EDWARD. PROGRESS  OF  THE    PURITANS. THE 

REFORMATION  NOT  COMPLETED.       CONCLUSION. 

Such  was  the  great  agony  through  which  the  Reforma- 
tion was  doomed  to  pass.  But  that  which  thou  sowest  is 
not  quickened  except  it  die,  and  so  it  proved  in  this  in- 
stance. The  reign  of  Mary  was  the  grave  of  the  cause 
for  a  short  season,  and  that  of  Elizabeth  was  now  to  be  its 
triumphant  resurrection.  It  will  not,  however,  be  neces- 
sary to  pursue  our  subject  much  further,  which,  from  a 
History  of  the  Reformation,  would  soon  run  into  a  History 
of  Puritanism,  the  extreme  to  which  it  degenerated  for  a 
while.  Into  this  question  it  is  not  our  intention  to  enter. 
For  the  present,  little  remained  to  be  done,  but  to  repeal 
the  several  laws  by  which  Mary  had  superseded  the  acts  of 
Henry  and  Edward,  and  to  resume  the  use  of  those  services 
and  rituals  which  the  martyrs  had  provided,  and  of  which 
the  nature  and  number  have  been  already  told.  But  Eliza- 
beth proceeded  warily.  Well  as  her  religious  sentiments 
were  understood,  none  but  the  most  attentive  observer 
could  have  at  first  detected  them  in  her  conduct.  A  figure 
of  Truth  greets  her  with  a  translation  of  the  Bible  in  its 
hand;  she  takes  the  book  and  reverendy  kisses  it.  A 
court  buffoon  beseeches  her  to  restore  to  freedom  four  pri- 
soners long  bound  in  fetters,  Mathew,  Mark,  Luke,  and 
John;  she  answers  that  she  must  first  endeavour  to  know 


ELIZABETH.  277 

the  minds  of  the  prisoners  themselves.  At  her  coronation 
in  Westminster  Abbey,  she  partakes  of  the  mass;*  on 
Christmas  day,  which  was  about  a  month  later,  she  demurs 
to  hear  it.t  The  puritans  make  haste  to  pull  down  the 
images;  she  bids  them  hold  their  hand.  Unlicensed  preach- 
ers, be  they  of  what  denomination  they  may,  Catholics  or 
Protestants  she  silences  alike.  The  marriage  of  the  clergy, 
much  as  the  measure  was  desired  by  the  leaders  of  the 
Reformation,  she  refuses,  connives  at,  at  last  reluctantly 
concedes.  She  offends  the  zealots  of  both  paities,  for  she 
openly  espouses  the  cause  of  neither;^  but  she  makes  that 
party  her  own,  which  represents  the  sober,  the  stable,  the 
somewhat  phlegmatic  good  sense  of  the  English  people;  a 
party  without  which  no  government,  however  brilliant,  can 
be  safe;  and  with  which  none,  however  unattractive,  can 
be  long  in  danger.  Such  policy  was  natural  to  herself; — 
"  My  sweet  sister  Temperance^''''  was  the  name  by  which 
her  brother  loved  to  call  her;  and,  moreover  she  had  been 
nursed  in  the  school  of  caution,  and  for  years  one  word  or 
deed  of  indiscretion  might  have  cost  her  her  head.  Such  poli- 
cy, too,  was  after  the  heart  of  Cecil,  perhaps  the  sagest  of  her 
counsellors,  who  now  taught  his  mistress  to  thread  her  way, 
as  he  had  hitherto  threaded  his  own,  through  most  dange- 
rous and  difficult  times,  with  the  sagacity  of  a  wizard. 
The  outset  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  indeed,  was  perhaps  the 
masterpiece  of  his  tactics;  and  years  afterwards,  when 
the  crisis  was  passed  and  the  Reformation  established,  he 
appealed  to  that  period,  as  well  he  might,  in  proof  of  his 
successful  devotion  to  the  cause  of  truth. §  Still  Elizabeth 
was  working  her  way  underground,  and  by  measures  which 

*  Strype's  Annals,  p.  29. 
t  Ellis's  Letters,  Second  Series,  ii.  261. 
t  Strype's  Annals,  p.  41. 
§  Strype's  Annals,  p.  82. 
24 


278  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

whilst  they  did  not  provoke  notice,  would  not  fail  to  pro- 
duce fruits.  Thus,  though  she  would  not  exclude  Roman 
Catholics  from  her  privy  council,  she  would  yoke  them  with 
such  colleagues  as  were  friendly  to  the  Reformation,  and 
were  at  the  same  time  of  talents  so  extraordinary  as 
would  readily  obtain  the  mastery  in  debate.  Though  she 
would  not  weed  out  of  the  commission  of  the  peace  Roman 
Catholic  magistrates,  she  would  regulate  her  new  appoint- 
ments with  a  view  to  serving  the  cause  she  had  secretly  at 
heart.  She  would  not  compel,  or  attempt  to  compel,  a  Ro- 
man Catholic  parliament  by  force  to  make  the  laws  she  de- 
sired, but  she  would  take  care  to  influence  the  elections  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  secure  the  return  of  members  who 
would  do  so.  Her  first  object  appears  to  have  been  to 
soothe  the  country:  to  maintain  the  authority  of  the  law, 
be  it  as  yet  what  it  might;  to  establish  her  own  position  as 
monarch;  and  thus  to  possess  herself  of  a  basis  on  which 
she  might  proceed  to  build,  at  her  leisure,  the  permanent 
prosperity  of  her  realm. 

Her  parliament  assembled,  and  never  did  a  parliament 
meet  under  circumstances  more  imperative:  to  its  wisdom 
it  was  left  to  order  and  settle  all  things  upon  the  best  and 
surest  foundations;  and  accordingly  it  passed  the  two  great 
acts  by  which  the  alliance  between  church  and  state  was  esta- 
blished, those  of  Supremacy  and  Uniformity;  neither  of 
them,  indeed,  now  enacted  for  the  hist  lime,  but  both  stat- 
utes of  Henry  or  Edward,  with  certain  amendments,  reivved. 

Against  the  Act  of  Supremacy  some  objections  were 
urged  in  the  parliament,  and  some  scruples  out  of  it;  both, 
no  doubt,  proceeding  from  the  same  quarter.  It  was  a 
scandal  to  place  a  woman  at  the  head  of  the  church,  whose 
voice  was  not  to  be  heard  in  it;  yet  the  principle  (it  was  ar- 
gued) was  acknowledged  in  a  degree  by  the  Catholics  them- 
selves, who  had  no  difficulty  in  recognising  the  authority  of 


ACTS  OF  SUPREMACY  AND  UNIFORMITY.  279 

an  abbess,  though  of  a  nature  in  many  respects  much  more 
strictly  ecclesiastical,  than  that  with  which  it  was  proposed 
to  invest  the  queen.*  Neither  was  there  any  disposition 
in  her  Majesty  to  challenge  an  authority  to  minister  in  the 
church  (as  was  maliciously  given  out,)  or,  indeed,  any  other 
authority  than  such  as  had  been  enjoyed  by  her  father  and 
brother  of  famous  memory."!  By  tlie  Act  of  Uniformity, 
the  exclusive  use  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  in  the 
public  services  was  enjoined  under  pain  of  imprisonment, 
and  eventually  of  deprivation;  whilst  a  respect  for  it  was 
further  exacted  by  penalties  against  those  who  should  teach 
or  preach  to  the  disparagement  of  the  same;  and  (what  was 
a  measure  of  more  questionable  expediency,  as  well  as 
right)  against  those  who  should  refuse  to  resort  to  their 
parish  churches  to  hear  it4  Meanwhile,  it  should  be 
added,  some  few  alterations  had  been  made  in  the  liturgy, 
dictated  by  a  wish  not  to  give  needless  offence  to  the  Roman 
Catholics,  but  to  win  them,  if  possible,  still  to  remain  in  a 
church  which  ever  professed  to  be  the  restoration  rather 
than  the  rival  of  their  own.  In  the  end,  all  the  parochial 
clergy,  with  the  exception  of  eighty  individuals,  took  the  oath 
of  supremacy,  and  conformed.  Not  so  the  bishops:  they  all, 
save  one,  were  recusants,  as  were  also  many  deans,  heads 
of  colleges,  and  prebendaries,  and  were  consequendy  de- 
prived. It  is  unfair  to  attribute  an  act  apparendy  conscien- 
tious to  an  unworthy  motive, ^but  it  was  suspected  that  a  re- 
cusancy so  general  amongst  one  order  of  ecclesiastics,  and 
that  the  highest,  was  preconcerted,  more  especially  as  many 
or  all  of  them  had  subscribed  to  tlie  supremacy  of  Henry 
and  Edward;  and  that  it  was  not  wholly  independent  of  the 
notion  that  the  Queen  would  find  it  difficult,  in  the  actual 

*  Heylyn,  p.  109.  fol.  t  Sparrow's  Collection,  p.  82. 

t  Ibid.  p.  112.  §  Strype's  Annals,  p.  73. 


280  KEFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

condition  of  the  church  to  fill  up  their  places  to  her  satis- 
faction, and  would  descend  to  a.  compromise.*  The  diffi- 
culty, too,  whatever  it  was,  was  augmented,  it  might  be 
thought,  by  the  numerous  vacancies  which  the  sickness  re- 
cently prevailing  in  the  country  had  created  amongst  the 
upper  ranks  of  the  clergy.  If  such,  however,  were  the 
speculations,  they  were  fallacious.  That  great  company  of 
preachers  was  overlooked,  who  had  been  living  in  exile, 
and  were  now  eager  to  return; — persons  but  ill  qualified,  by 
their  long  habits  of  necessary  frugality  and  retirement,  to 
succeed  to  the  purple  of  their  episcopal  predecessors,!  and 
not  having  that  in  their  looks  which  men  would  willingly 
call  master,  yet  scholars  ripe  and  good.  Christians,  more- 
over, sobered  by  adversity,  and  in  many  instances  found  to 
possess,  under  a  mean  aspect,  perhaps,  a  genius  that  was 
vast.  Out  of  these  were  drafted  many  recruits;  Jewel,  the 
Coryphaeus  of  them  all,  a  man,  indeed,  of  matchless  learn- 
ing, which  he  nevertheless  wields,  ponderous  as  it  is,  like 
a  plaything:  of  a  most  polished  wit;  a  style,  whether  Latin 
or  English,  the  most  pure  and  expressive,  such  as  argues  a 
precision  in  the  character  of  his  ideas,  and  a  lucid  order  in 
the  arrangement  of  them,  quite  his  own.  His  "  Apology" 
and  his  "  Defence"  of  it,  were  the  crowning  works  of  the 
Reformation,  and  may  be  regarded,  on  the  whole,  as  those 
in  which  its  doctrines  are  put  upon  record  by  one  the  best 
qualified  of  all  men  to  asser|  them  with  authority,  both 
from  his  intimate  knowledge  of  the  subject,  the  personal  in- 
tercourse he  had  enjoyed  with  its  chief  promoters,  and  the 
favourable  moment  at  which  he  wrote.  But  whilst  some  of 
these  exiles  were  thus  the  pillars  of  their  church,  others 
were  the  reeds.     Such  were  Cartwright,  appointed  to  the 

*  Strype's  Annals,  pp.  106.  147.150. 
t  Id.  p.  237. 


RETURN  OF  THE  EXILES.  281 

Margaret  professorship  in  Cambridge,  and  Sampson,  to  the 
deanery  of  Christ-church.  What  could  come  of  these 
ministers,  or  of  others  like  to  these,  but  a  plentiful  harvest 
of  non-conformity  in  the  generation  of  students  brought 
within  the  influence  of  their  example  and  teaching;  destined 
themselves  to  impart  it  in  their  turn  to  the  several  parishes 
throughout  England  in  which  their  lots  might  happen  to  be 
cast?  Here,  then,  was  a  schism,  violent  enough  to  endanger 
even  a  long-established  church,  much  more  one  so  recently 
settled  as  our  own.  But  besides  the  Sampsons  and  Cart- 
wrights,  extravagant  schismatics,  there  was  another  and  a 
larger  class  behind,  good  men  indeed,  but,  perhaps,  too 
gentle  for  the  times,  the  class  of  lukewarm  churchmen,  who 
still  strengthened  the  hands  and  ministered  to  the  purposes 
(however  unwittingly)  of  spirits  more  determined  than 
themselves.*  Such  was  Pilkington,  bishop  of  Durham,! 
and  even  Grindal,  bishop  of  London,:}:  both  Marian  exiles, 
and  neither  of  them  very  cordial  fellow-workers  with  Par- 
ker, himself  not  an  exile.  For  here  was  the  origin  of  these 
religious  distinctions:  the  former  leaning  to  the  puritan; 
— Grindal  himself  being  the  Algrind  of  Spenser,  whose 
praises  of  him  bespeak  the  party  with  which  he  was  iden- 
tified;§ — the  latter  leaning  to  the  Roman  Catholic.  Nor 
did  the  division  expire  with  this  generation;  Abbot  and 
Laud  still  presenting  the  same  contrast  in  the  next,  when 
the  church  was  upon  the  eve  of  that  dissolution  which 
was  the  issue  of  the  whole.  Still  the  puritan  principle, 
violently  as  it  worked,  subversive  as  it  was  of  much  that  was 
innocent  and  much  that  w^as  holy,  had  this  to  redeem  it,  that 
it  purged  out  of  the  kingdom,  effectually  and  for  ever,  the 

*  Strype's  Annals,  p.  88.  t  Strype's  Parker,  p.  155. 

t  Strype's  Grindal,  p.  28.  et  alibi,      §  Spenser,  Eclogue  vii 

2i* 


282  REFOKfllATlON  IN  ENGLAND. 

popery  (we  can  use  no  other  word  to  express  our  meaning) 
which  lingered  in  its  veins,  and  which,  without  the  applica- 
tion of  a  strong  antidote,  might  once  more  have  penetrated 
to  its  vitals.  For  the  spirit  of  popery,  properly  so  called,  al- 
ways active,  and  now  the  more  so  from  the  ill-disguised 
claims  of  the  Queen  of  Scots  to  the  throne  of  England,  had 
been  recently  recruited,  it  must  be  remembered,  by  the  in- 
stitution of  the  order  of  Jesuits,  which,  springing  up  in  the 
age  of  the  Reformation,  aimed  at  directing  the  general  move- 
ment, both  in  religion  and  politics,  to  the  advantage  of  the 
Bishop  of  Rome,  whose  devoted  servants  they  professed 
themselves.  The  rules,  the  activity,  and  the  learning  of 
this  society  rendered  them  formidable  to  any  Protestant 
state,  and  added  not  a  little  to  the  perplexities  of  Elizabeth's 
position,  who,  whilst  she  feared  the  levelling  and  anti-mo- 
narchical principles  of  the  Puritans,  otherwise  her  natural 
allies  against  these  champions  of  the  Pope,  was  in  still 
greater  jeopardy  from  a  hostile  order,  universal  in  its  influ- 
ence, secret  in  its  operations,  sagacious  as  herself  in 
its  councils;  and  if  at  length  her  government  proved  that 
it  bore  not  the  sword  in  vain,  but  smote  with  somewhat 
of  a  ruthless  hand,  it  was  rather  in  self-defence  against 
political  agitators  that  it  so  acted,  than  in  violation  of 
the  rights  of  conscience.  For  certainly  the  severity  did 
not  begin  till  after  her  subjects  had  been  "absolved  from 
their  allegiance  by  a  Pope's  bull,*  neither  did  it  ever  mani- 
fest itself  against  woman  or  child;  a  distinction  this,  between 
the  punishments  of  Elizabeth  and  the  persecutions  of  Mary, 
sufficient  in  itself  to  point  out  that  it  was  the  disloyalty,  and 
not  the  creed,  of  the  parties  that  drew  upon  them  the  ven- 

*  The  nature  and  political  effects  of  this  famous  bull,  issued  by  Pius 
V.  in  1563,  may  be  seen  in  Bishop  Jewel's  "  view  of  it." 


THE  JESUITS.  283 

geance  of  the  Queen;  and  to  confirm  the  assertion  of  Cecil 
in  his  "  execution  of  justice,"  that  no  one  was  put  to  death, 
by  Elizabeth  for  his  religion  only,*  as  well  as  a  similar  vin- 
dication of  her  policy  advanced  with  much  detail  in  a  letter 
of  Walsingham's — a  policy  which,  he  contends,  was  ever 
regulated  by  two  rules,  "  to  deal  tenderly  with  consciences, 
but  not  to  suffer  causes  of  conscience  to  grow  to  be  matters 
of  faction."! 

The  two  important  statutes  of  which  we  have  spoken 
were  followed  up  in  the  same  year  by  injunctions  of  the 
Queen,  after  the  manner  of  those  of  her  brother.  They 
are  expressed,  indeed,  so  far  as  the  case  admits,  in  the  very 
same  words  as  those  of  Edward  twelve  years  before. 
Wherever,  therefore,  a  change  is  introduced,  there  must 
have  been  a  reason  for  it,  and  an  index  is  thus  obtained  of 
the  progress  of  opinion,  the  more  satisfactory  because  quite 
incidental.:}:  Thus,  on  a  comparison  of  the  two  sets.  It  will 
be  found,  that  the  Roman  catholic  religion  is  treated  with 
less  courtesy  by  Edward  than  by  Elizabeth.  In  the  injunc- 
tions of  the  former  we  read  "  of  kissing  and  licking  of  ima- 
ges:" in  those  of  the  latter  the  offensive  expression  is  ex- 
punged. So  again,  in  the  first,  the  power  of  the  Pope  is 
said  to  be  justly  "  rejected,  cxlirpated,  and  taken  away  ut- 
terly:'' in  the  others,  it  is  thought  enough  to  declare  that  it 
is  "  jusdy  rejected  and  taken  away."  These  denounce  the 
abuses  of  the  Sabbath — "  a  day  on  which  God  is  more  of- 
fended than  pleased,  more  dishonoured  than  honoured,  be- 
cause of  idleness,  pride,  drunkenness,  quarrelling,  brawling, 
which  are  most  used  on  such  days;  the  people,  nevertheless, 
persuading  themselves  sufficiently  to  honour  God  on  that 

*  See  Hallam's  Constitutional  History,  i.  223. 
t  See  the  letter  in  Burnet,  ii.  311. 

t  See  these  injunctions  in  Bishop  Sparrow's  Collection,  p.  1.  and 
p.  67. 


284  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

day,  if  they  hear  mass  and  service;  and  then  is  suggested  a 
more  excellent  way  of  keeping  the  Sabbath  holy:  in  those 
of  Elizabeth  the  wholesome  suggestion  is  retained,  but  the 
sabbatical  picture  is  suppressed.  It  may  be  questioned, 
however,  whether  this  omission  was  made  altogether  in  de- 
ference to  the  feelings  of  the  Roman  Catholics:  perhaps  the 
progress  of  puritanism  iiad  already  begun  to  correct  such 
gross  disorders;  for  it  must  be  admitted,  we  apprehend,  that 
the  more  decent  and  devout  observance  of  Sunday,  for 
which  England  is  still  remarkable,  not  only  above  catholic, 
but  even  above  other  reformed  countries,  is  to  be  greatly 
ascribed  to  this  all-powerful  principle;  its  stern  decrees  still 
felt  to  impart  to  the  character  of  that  day  a  sobriety,  though 
not  longer  a  gloom.  For,  pursuing  the  same  comparison, 
we  shall  find  other  symptoms  of  the  puritan  being  now  in 
the  ascendant.  Thus,  according  to  Edward's  commands, 
images,  shrines,  pictures,  and  the  like  are  to  be  destroyed, 
nor  any  memory  of  the  same  to  be  left  in  walls  and  glass 
windows.  Elizabeth,  however,  adds,  that  "  the  walls  and 
glass-windows  shall  be  nevertheless  preserved,"  as  though 
the  crusade  against  all  ecclesiastical  ornaments  had  already 
begun.  Again,  by  Edward's  injunctions,  unlicensed  preach- 
ers are  not  to  be  admitted  into  a  pulpit.  Those  of  Elizabeth, 
however,  go  farther,  not  allowing  even  licensed  preachers 
to  officiate  out  of  their  own  parishes,  unless  they  have  a 
special  license  for  this,  as  though  itinerancy  had  com- 
menced. Then,  in  the  latter,  we  find  certain  supplemen- 
tary clauses  not  in  the  injunctions  of  Edward,  all  pointing 
to  the  same  conclusion.  One  against  the  growth  of  heresies, 
contrary  to  the  faith  of  Christ  and  his  Holy  Spirit;  still  a 
foretaste  of  the  speculative  imaginations  of  the  next  centuiy. 
Another  against  disturbing  the  congregation  in  the  time  of 
sermon;  a  practice  afterwards  so  common,  and  of  which 
Bishop  Bull's  debate  with  the  brawling  Quaker  is  a  charac- 


INJUNCTIONS  OF  ELIZABETH,  285 

teristic  instance.*  A  third,  for  the  better  regulation  of  sing- 
ing in  churches;  not,  indeed,  absolutely  forbidding  the  use 
of  music,  but  reducing  it  to  much  greater  simplicity;  a  con- 
cession, as  far  as  it  went,  to  the  same  party,  who  would 
willingly  have  ejected  all  organs,  and  allowed  no  psalmody 
whatever,  but  such  as  was  strictly  congregational. t  Mean- 
while the  secret  of  this  growing  strength  of  the  puritan 
cause  is  discovered  in  other  allusions,  contained  in  the  same 
injunctions,  to  the  penury  of  the  church,  and  the  ignorance 
of  its  ministers;  the  natural  effect  of  the  late  pillage  and  mis- 
application of  its  revenues:  for  here  we  encounter,  not  with- 
out some  feelings  of  humiliation,  such  provisions  as  these 
{ex  pede  Herculem):  that  no  priest  shall  marry  without 
permission  given  by  the  bishop  and  two  justices  of  the  peace 
living  next  to  the  place  where  the  woman  hath  made  her 
most  abode  before  marriage,  nor  without  the  good  will  of 
her  parents  or  next  kinsfolk;  or,  for  lack  of  such,  of  "^er 
master  or  mistress  ivhere  she  livethy  And  again,  that 
*'  such  as  are  but  mean  readers  shall  peruse  over  before 
once  or  twice  the  chapters  and  homilies,  to  the  intent  they 
may  read  to  the  better  understanding  of  the  people,  and  the 
more  encouragement  of  godliness."  This  is  a  glimpse  of 
a  sad  picture;  but  it  is  such  as  the  sketch  given  in  a  former 
chapter^  of  the  condition  of  the  clergy  under  King  Edward 
must  have  prepared  us  to  expect.  The  Reformation  was 
still  too  recent  an  event,  and  had  been  effected  by  means  too 
violent,  for  the  great  good  that  was  in  it  to  have  developed 
itself.  The  fountain  had  been  thoroughly  troubled,  and  time 
was  wanting  for  it  to  defecate,  as  well  as  an  infusion,  per- 
haps, of  some  fresh  elements  that  should  expedite  the  pro- 
cess of  precipitation.  These  Cranmer  would  have  supplied 

*  Nelson's  Life  of  Bull,  p.  25.  Oxf.  t  Strypc's  Annals,  p.  298. 

X  Chap.  VIII. 


286  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

had  he  been  allowed  lo  complete  his  own  idea.  But  his 
untimely  death,  and  the  selfish  passions  of  men  too  strong 
for  him,  thwarting  him  whilst  he  lived,  scanted  the  Refor- 
mation of  much  that  should  have  belonged  to  it,  and  con- 
signed it  to  posterity  a  noble  but  siill  an  unfinished  work — 
a  work  in  which  there  is  every  thing  to  admire,  and  yet 
something  to  desiderate. 

Thus  it  has  been  said  that  the  Reformation  left  the  church 
without  discipline;  a  defect  which  our  commination-service 
confesses  and  laments;  but  it  was  one  from  which  the  Ro- 
man catholic  church  itself  was  not  exempt,  for  the  rivalry 
which  existed  between  the  secular  and  regular  clergy,  and 
again  between  the  several  orders  of  the  latter,  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  fatal  to  discipline.  Still,  whatever  the  defect 
was,  it  was  not  the  fault  of  the  reformers  that  it  was  suf- 
fered to  remain.  The  canon  laws  were,  indeed,  no  longer 
strictly  applicable  to  the  church,  constructed  as  it  now  was: 
but  an  attempt  was  made  to  accommodate  them,  or  to  substi- 
tute for  them  such  as  were  thought  better.  A  code,  which 
he  called  Reformatio  Legurn  Eeclesiasticarum,  was  drawn 
up  by  Cranmer,  consisting  of  fifty-one  titles,  with  an  appen- 
dix, after  the  manner  of  the  Digest  of  Justinian.  It  under- 
went many  revisions  in  private  during  the  reigns  of  Henry 
and  Edward,  but  was  not  produced.  It  was  revived,  with 
a  view  to  its  legal  enactment,  by  the  Puritans  in  the  lower 
house  of  parliament  under  Elizabeth;  but  the  Queen  thought 
it  trenched  upon  her  supremacy,  and  would  not  hear  of  it. 
It  was  reprinted,  and  no  more  under  Charles  I.,  and  was 
suggested  once  again  to  public  notice  by  Bishop  Burnet.* 
All,  however,  would  not  do;  it  fell  to  the  ground;  whether 
originally  from  the  mere  accident  of  the  deaths  of  Henry 
and  Edward  before  it  was  fully  matured;  whether  from  the 

*  Hist,  of  his  own  times;  —  conclusion. 


THE  REFORMATION  DEFECTIVE.  287 

difficulty  of  maintaining  penal  statutes  in  general  in  a 
church  founded  upon  the  principles  of  the  Reformation; 
or  whether,  as  some  have  thought,  from  the  extreme  severi- 
ty of  the  code  itself.  That  the  latter  circumstance  was  the 
cause  of  its  non-enactment  it  is  difficult  to  helieve;  for,  severe 
as  it  may  seem  to  us,  and  as  it  undoubtedly  is,  the  distinc- 
tion which  is  made  in  it  between  the  essential  and  unessen- 
tial doctrines  of  Christianity,  and  the  exclusive  application 
of  the  capital  laws  against  heresy  to  the  former,  was  the 
first  instance  of  any  such  discrimination  being  exercised. f 
and  may  be  fairly  considered  as  a  step  in  the  progress  of 
the  principles  of  toleration;  as  the  mitigation  rather  than  the 
approval  of  penal  excesses;  for  so  litde  was  that  age  pre- 
pared !o  revolt  at  the  provisions  laid  down  in  it,  that  Bish- 
op Jewel,  who  must  have  ranked  rather  with  the  liberal  than 
the  dogmatical  party  of  his  own  day;  who  had  lived  in  exile 
at  Frankfort,  a  liberal  school;  himself,  therefore,  a  victim  of 
persecution;  and  wlio  wrote  many  years  after  Cranmer; 
seems  to  approve  the  same  theory  of  punishment,  and  perhaps 
tiiesame  scale  of  it;  for  whilst  he  vindicates  freedom  of  opinion 
up  to  a  certain  point,  still  such  as  "  have  a  wicked  opinion 
either  of  God  the  Father,  or  of  Christ,  or  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
or  of  any  otlier  point,  of  Christian  religion,  they  being  con- 
futed by  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  he  would  plainly  pronounce 
detestable  and  damned  persons,  and  would  defy  them  even 
unto  the  devil;  neither  would  he  leave  them  so,  but  would 
also  severely  and  straitly  hold  them  in  by  lazvful  and  politic 
punishments,  if  they  fortune  to  break  out  any  where  and  be- 
wray themselves."!  These  are  very  strong  words.  And 
what  is  more  remarkable  still,    a  similar  line  was  adopted, 

*  See  Sir  James  Mackintosh's  History  of  England,  ii.  272.,  and  for 
the  fact  of  the  distinction  (which  has  been  disputed),  Mr.  Todd's  Life 
o^Cranmcr,  ii.  334. 

+  Jewel's  Apology,  part  iii.  ch.  i.  sect.  3. 


288  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

nearly  a  hundred  years  later,  by  one  who  has  been  consi- 
dered the  great  champion  of  religious  liberty,  and  in  a  work 
expressly  dedicated  to  the  extension  of  it,  and  though  it  is 
more  than  probable  that  Jeremy  Taylor,  here,  as  elsewhere, 
would  not  have  had  the  courage  to  follow  out  his  own  argu- 
ment to  its  practical  results,  and  would  have  shrunk  from 
"putting  to  death  or  dismembering"  the  professing  Chris- 
tian, even  ibr  "  impiety  or  blasphemy,"  or  for  opinions  (if 
only  such),  however  "  destructive  of  the  foundation  of  reli- 
gion;"* yet  the  theory  iiself,  re-asserted  after  so  long  an  in- 
terval, and  by  such  an  advocate,  is  enough  to  prove  that 
Cranmer  was  rather  in  advance  of  his  generation  than  be- 
hind it;  and  that  he  is  still  to  be  regarded  as  the  reformer*, 
and  not  as  the  bigot. 

But  there  is  reason  to  think  that  the  capital  penalties  even 
of  his  code  would  have  been  mitigated,  had  he  ever  actually 
presented  it  to  the  legislature.  Cranmer  was  becoming  daily 
more  tolerant,  as  he  gradually  fell  under  the  influence  of  a 
more  charitable  faith.  He  had  been  shocked,  it  is  said,  by 
the  solemn  manner  in  which  Edward  made  him  responsible 
before  God  for  the  life  of  Joan  of  Kent;  he  expressed  him- 
self shortly  afterwards  of  Gardiner  in  terms  significant  of  a 
repugnance  to  severities;t  and  he  was  one  of  those  who  ad- 
vised connivance  at  the  use  of  the  mass  by  the  Princess 
Mary.  With  these  tokens  of  temper  before  us,  it  seems 
fair  to  infer,  that  however  greatly  Cranmer  coveted  the  es- 
tablishment of  discipline,  he  would  scarcely  have  bought  it 
at  the  price  of  blood;  and  that  his  own  character,  by  nature 
one  of  the  most  gentle,  was  asserting  itself  more  and  more 

*  See  The  Liberty  of  Prophesying-,  sect.  xiii.No.  i.p.  190.  and  sect. 
XV.  No.  iii.  p.  212.  4to. 

t  Cranmer's  Answer  to  Gardiner,  p.  265.  ed.  1580.  quoted  by  Mr. 
Todd,  ii.  152. 


WANT  OF  SCHOOLS.  289 

even  in  matters  calculated  to  put  it  most  of  all  to  the  proof. 
But  if  discipline,  properly  so  called,  be  lacking,  so  much 
the  rather  should  those  ecclesiastical  regulations  which  are 
of  imperfect  obligation  perhaps  (and  there  are  many  such) 
be  diligently  observed  by  the  clergy,  both  towards  those  set 
over  them,  and  towards  those  committed  to  their  charge;  the 
respect  or  neglect  of  which  is  just  that  which  constitutes  the 
decency  or  disorder  of  a  church;  a  distinction  not  easy  to 
describe  in  detail,  yet  sufficiently  intelligible  in  itself;  nor  is 
it  unreasonable  to  expect  that  the  laity  on  their  part  sliould 
see  the  advantage  of  such  rules,  which  cannot  be  onerous, 
and  cordially  co-operate  with  the  clergy  to  the  maintenance 
of  them. 

Another  particular  in  which  the  Reformation  was  left  in- 
complete, was  in  a  provision  for  the  sufficient  education  of 
the  people.  The  demand,  indeed,  for  education  had  not  hi- 
therto been  great:  few  boys  but  such  as  were  intended  for 
ecclesiastics  were  made  scholars;  so  that  even  Latimer  rec- 
kons the  sons  of  great  laymen  or  esquires,  as  he  calls  them, 
interlopers  in  the  universities.*  The  churchman,  and  no 
other,  was  the  clerk;  and  the  convent  was  in  general  the 
academy;  it  was  so,  at  least,  in  a  hundred  instances,  if  we 
understand  an  expression  used  by  the  speaker  of  the  lower 
house,  in  the  fourth  year  of  Elizabeth,  aright;  who,  in  his 
address  to  the  Queen  laments  the  loss  of  such  a  number  of 
places  of  education.!  Schools,  therefore,  in  the  present  sense 
of  the  word,  there  were  few;  not  more  than  three,  we  believe, 
in  all  London.  And  when  Dean  Colet  founded  that  of  St. 
Paul's  on  the  eve  of  the  Reformation,  it  was  a  thing  regard- 
ed with  somejealousy.J  Hence  it  probably  was,  that  the  num- 
bers sent  to  Oxford  and  Cambridge  (the  two  great  national 

*  Scrm.  i.  pp.  160.  183.  +  Strype's  Annals,  p,  25G. 

\  Knight's  Life  of  Colet,  p.  100. 
25 


290  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

schools,  as  they  were  then  considered)  were  so  extraordinary 
— thousands  where  there  are  now  hundreds;  and  that  the  age 
of  the  students  was  so  tender.  For  on  the  rapid  multipUca- 
tion  of  foundation  schools  throughout  the  country  in  the 
century  after  the  Reformation,  the  character  of  the  univer- 
sities, we  shall  find,  became  changed;  the  number  of  stu- 
dents diminishing,  in  spite  of  an  increasing  population,  and 
the  age  at  which  they  entered  greatly  advanced.  Milton's 
is  said  to  be  the  last  instance  of  corporal  punishment  in 
either  university — a  tradition  which,  whether  true  or  false 
as  to  the  individual,  may  serve  to  date  the  period  of  the 
transition  from  the  past  to  the  present  system  of  academical 
education.  But  of  the  few  schools  that  existed  before  the 
Reformation,  some  were  seized  and  sold  by  the  rapacious 
courtiers,  particularly  under  the  feeble  reign  of  Edward; 
here  was  one  channel  of  education  cut  off: — the  convents 
were  destroyed;  here  was  another: — the  universities  were 
decayed;  here  was  a  third: — they  were  decayed,  because 
the  yeomen  who  might  have  been  able  to  send  their  children 
to  a  school  in  the  neighbourhood,  if  there  had  been  one, 
w^ere  quite  unable,  from  a  disastrous  change  in  their  circum- 
stances, to  send  them,  as  they  often  had  done  heretofore,  to 
Oxford  and  Cambridge:*  an  education  so  remote,  frugal  as 
the  times  then  were,  being  comparatively  costly,  and  such  as 
rendered  even  the  ten  groats  which  Jewel  bestowed  upon 
Hooker,  when  he  called  upon  the  good  bishop  on  his  way 
to  his  college  on  foot,  not  unwelcome.  They  were  still 
further  decayed  from  the  same  cause  as  the  schools;  power- 
ful individuals  intercepted  and  appropriated  their  revenues 
— accordingly  very  many  students  were  actually  unable  to 
stay  "  for  lack  of  exhibition  and  help," — others  did  indeed 
stay,  but  in  extreme  penury.     They  rose  in  the  morning  be- 

*  Latimer's  Serm.  i.  p.  94.     Strypc's  Cranmer,  p.  89. 


WANT  OF  SCHOOLS.  291 

tween  four  and  five  o'clock;  at  ten  they  dined,  having  "  a 
penny  piece  of  beef  amongst  four,  a  few  potage  made  of  the 
same,  with  salt  and  oatmeal,  and  nothing  else: — at  five  in 
the  evening  they  had  a  supper  not  much  better  than  the 
dinner;  and,  before  they  went  to  bed,  which  was  at  nine  or 
ten,  being  without  fire,  "  they  were  fain  to  walk  or  run  up 
and  down  half  an  hour  to  get  a  heat  on  their  feet."  Such 
was  the  condition  of  what  students  there  were  in  Cambridge 
in  the  days  of  Edward  the  Fifth.*  Now  this  declension  in 
the  means  of  national  instruction  was  the  more  calamitous 
because  it  happened  at  a  moment  when  the  thirst  for  know- 
ledge was  becoming  intense,  and  when  it  was  more  than 
commonly  desirable  that  it  should  be  slaked  from  cisterns 
of  wholesome  waters.  Of  this  our  reformers  were  aware; 
but  again  they  were  baffled,  both  they  and  their  king.  The 
larger  benefices  were,  indeed,  charged  with  the  support  of 
one  scholar  at  the  university  for  every  hundred  pounds  of 
their  annual  value:  but  this  was  a  very  limited  provision 
for  the  wants  of  the  times.t  The  chantry  lands  would  have 
furnished  a  considerable,  perhaps  a  sufficient,  fund  for  the 
purpose,  and  Edward  did  so  apply  them  in  part,  and  would 
gladly  have  done  so  more  extensively;  but  they  were  de- 
voured by  the  nobles,  and  the  moment  for  royal  endowments 
went  by.  Happy  would  it  have  been,  had  it  been  other- 
wise. Such  grammar  schools  as  he  would  have  planted 
over  England  would  have  been  found  "seminaries  of  sound 

*  These  facts  are  gathered  from  a  sermon  at  Paul's  Cross,  in  1550 
by  one  Thomas  Lever,  afterwards  master  of  St.  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge. A  copy  of  this  sermon,  and  of  another  by  the  same  author,  is 
in  the  library  of  St.  John's. 

t  See  Sparrow's  Collection,  pp.  6.  71.     In  K.  Edward's  injunctions,  ^ 
it  is  a  "  competent  exhibition;"  in  Q.  Elizabeth's  the  sum  is  specified, 
3Z.  6s.  8d. 


292  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

learning,"  and  (what  was  the  first  consideration  of  the 
founder)  "  of  religious  education/'  They  might  have 
raised  up  a  more  literate  clergy.  They  might  have  checked, 
perhaps,  the  rising  extravagances  of  the  Puritans.  They 
might  have  sustained  the  church  by  the  direction  they  would 
have  given  to  public  opiniouj  and  dispersed  the  storm  which 
already  tlireatened,  by  conducting,  quiedy  and  not  unfruit- 
fully,  to  the  earth,  the  fierce  elements  with  which  the  po- 
litical and  religious  atmosphere  was  already  so  heavily 
charged.  For  they  would  have  been  the  natural  feeders  of 
the  church  of  England;  the  visitor,  probably  one  of  its  pre- 
lates; the  teachers,  its  more  learned  ministers;  the  prayers, 
those  of  its  services;  the  catechism,  its  manual  of  doctrines 
— that  which  Dean  Nowell  composed  in  Latin,  and  which 
was  afterwards  translated  into  Greek  by  Dr.  Whitaker,  his 
nephew,  for  the  express  use  of  such  schools,  having  been 
approved  in  convocation,  and  been  acknowledged  to  speak 
the  authorised  language  of  the  reformers.  A  few  such 
schools  King  Edward  did  establish,  as  we  have  said;  but 
in  numbers  quite  inadequate  to  the  demands  of  the  nation, 
which  must  have  been  abandoned  to  gross  ignorance,  and 
to  the  delusions  of  every  theological  empiric  (which  was  in 
a  great  degree  the  case  after  all),  but  for  the  many  private 
foundations,  still  however  very  insufficient,  by  which  the 
reign  of  Elizabeth,  who  incorporated  them,  was  distin- 
guished. For  these,  the  country  was  indebted  to  the  gene- 
rous efforts  not  of  ecclesiastics  only,  but  also  of  opulent 
yeomen  and  tradesmen,  the  last  of  whom,  having  made  an 
ample  fortune,  generally  in  London,  the  first-fruits  of  the 
commerce  of  England,  often  retired  to  spend  it  in  the  place 
which  had  given  them  birth,  and  of  which  they  piously  en- 
deavoured to  relieve  the  intellectual  and  religious  wants  by 
erecting  a  school,  connecting  it  with  the  universities  by  scho- 


PRIVATE   FOUNDATIONS.  293 

larships,  and  with  the  church  by  the  qualifications  of  its 
masters.  In  these  institutions,  whether  of  royal  or  private 
foundation,  most  of  our  yeomen,  shopkeepers,  and  small 
householders  who  resided  within  reach  of  them,  besides 
many  of  a  higher  rank,  were  heretofore  educated;  a  class  of 
persons  which  both  the  recollection  of  living  men,  and  still 
more  the  records  of  our  domestic  history,  lead  us  to  think 
not  less  sound  in  knowledge,  nor  less  sage  and  sober  in  sen- 
timents, not  less  loyal  subjects  or  less  virtuous  citizens,  than 
the  more  enlightened  generation,  as  it  has  been  called, 
which  has  succeeded  them,  the  sons  of  our  commercial 
schools.  Whilst  by  means  of  those  same  institutions  a  M'ay 
has  been  commonly  opened  to  youths  of  promise,  though  it 
may  be  of  humble  parentage,  into  the  two  great  seats  of  learn- 
lag,  of  which  they  have  often  become  the  brightest  orna- 
ments; and  into  the  church,  of  which  they  have  no  less 
frequendy  proved  themselves  the  most  conspicuous  and 
valuable  ministers.  Perhaps  it  may  be  added,  that  in  either 
capacity,  whether  as  nurseries  of  our  laymen  or  of  our  clergy, 
such  schools,  productive  as  they  have  been  of  men  duly 
qualified  to  serve  God  and  their  country,  would  have  been 
far  more  so,  had  the  principles  upon  which  they  were  first 
founded  been  more  rigorously  observed  in  times  past  (for 
the  error  has  been  discovered,  and  some  pains  are  now 
taken  to  remove  it);  had  religion  in  general,  its  evidences 
and  substance,  entered  still  more  largely  into  their  regular 
studies;  and  that  particular  form  of  it  established  in  this 
kingdom  been  made  a  theme  of  their  more  habitual  instruc- 
tion and  parental  concern. 

Another  defect  imputed  to  the  Reformation  is  the  inade- 
quate support  it  provided  for  the  lower  orders  of  the  clergy. 
Four  thousand  livings,  and  upwards,  of  less  than  one  hun- 

*  See  particularly  his  Sermon  on  Psalm  ixix.  9. 
25* 


294  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

dred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year  each,  many  very  far  less,  with 
no  parsonage  houses  whatever,  or  with  such  as  the  most 
Sabine  economist  would  pronounce  unfit  for  a  clergyman  to 
occupy; — this  is  the  forlorn  condition,  as  to  temporals,  in 
which  the  church  has  stood  for  a  long  season;  a  condition 
to  which  it  could  not  have  been  reduced,  had  even  a  portion 
of  the  vast  revenues  dispersed  at  the  Reformation  been  hus- 
banded, and  applied  to  the  legitimate  purpose  of  bettering 
the  situation  of  the  inferior  clergy.  This,  Cranmer  most 
earnesdy  desired;  but  his  entreaties  and  regrets  were  alike 
unavailing.  The  evil  continued,  and  Jewel  took  up  the  sub- 
ject in  his  turn;  and  pressed  the  redress  of  it  upon  Elizabeth 
and  her  nobles,  in  his  sermons  at  Paul's  Cross  (very  curi- 
ous pictures  of  the  times);  but  the  spoil  was  then  divided, 
and  restitution  was  looked  for  in  vain.*  Laud  made  ano- 
ther effort;  one  of  whose  projects  it  was  to  move  Charles 
for  a  grant  to  buy  in  impropriations,  twoof  which  he  hoped 
thus  to  redeem  every  year;  but  his  chance  of  success  best 
appears  from  the  very  intention  (of  which  the  record  was 
found  in  his  diary)  being  made  matter  of  charge  against  him 
at  his  trial.  Had  the  exertions  of  these  prelates  been  effect- 
ive, the  very  great,  but,  as  things  at  present  stand,  the  neces- 
sary evil  of  pluralities  and  non-residence  would  have  been 
prevented,  or  left  without  cause  or  excuse.  As  it  is,  to  pro- 
scribe the  pluralist  altogether,  would  in  many  cases,  be  to 
visit  with  utter  poverty  the  meritorious  labourer  in  the  vine- 
yard, him  and  his  little  ones;  and  to  insist,  in  all  cases,  upon 
residence,  would  be,  in  some,  to  say  that  the  village  handi- 
craftsman more  lettered  than  his  fellows,  should  be  again  the 
officiating  minister,  as  he  once  was  in  Edward's  days,  and  as 
he  was  forbidden  to  be,  from  the  mischief  it  occasioned,  un- 
der Elizabeth.     The  evil  of  which  we  speak   is  grievous; 

*  See  particularly  his  Sermon  on  Psalm  Ixix.  9. 


WANT  OF  PROVISION  FOR  THE  CLERGY.  295 

but  It  has  been  and  is  decreasing.  By  help  of  Queen  Anne's 
bounty,  of  which  the  origin  and  history   has   been  briefly 
told  already,  a  sum  of  money  advanced  for  the  augmentation 
of  a  small  living  is  met  with  an  equal  sum,  when  the  whole 
is  invested  in  land,  so  soon  as  land  can  be  found;  and  thus 
is  the  income  of  the  poor  incumbent  improved.     And,  by  a 
modern  and  excellentactof  the  legislature,  empowering  him 
to  mortgage  his  beneiice  to  the  amount  of  two  years'   in- 
come, and  to  bind  his  successors  as  well  as  himself  for  the 
gradual  liquidation  of  the  debt,  he  is  enabled  to  build  a  new 
house,  or  make  an  old  one  habitable;  and  thus  is  his  resi- 
dence encouraged.     The  beneficial  operation  of  these  two 
instruments  of  gradual  church  reform  is  more  and  more  ma- 
nifest every  day.     By  virtue  of  them   the  modest  but  not 
mean  parsonage  is  beginning  to  appear  in  many  rude  and  se- 
cluded hamlets  where  before  there  had  been  none:   and  the 
advantages  of  a  pastor  on  the  spot,  frugal,  indeed,  of  neces- 
sity, but  carrying  with  him  the  respect  which  superior  in- 
telligence commands,  and  the  sympathies  of  those  amongst 
whom  he  walks  not  unseen;  whose  adviser  he  is  in  difficul- 
ties, and  peace-maker  in  disputes;  whose  houses  he  visits  in 
sickness  and  sorrow,  and  whose  children  he  teaches  the  way 
in  which   they  should  go; — these  charities,  the  attendants 
upon  a  resident  ministry,  are  diffusing  themselves  over  dis- 
tricts where  they  were  once  unfelt,  and  attaching  the  inha- 
bitants to  our  church  by  the  strongest  of  all  ties,  "  the  cords 
of  a  man."       But,  alas!  the  residence  must  depend  upon 
the  house,  and  the  house  upon  the  income  of  the  benefice: 
to  the  improvement  of  the  latter,  therefore,  should  our  ef- 
forts be  first  directed,  as  the  moving-spring  of  all;  and  if,  by 
any  equitable  means,  the  fund  at  the  disposal  of  the  commis- 
sioners of  Queen  Anne's  bounty  could  be  enriched,  great 
would  be  the  gain.     But  if  lay   patrons  of  small  livings, 
where  they  happen  to  be  also  impropriators,  could  be  in- 


296  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

duced  to  co-operate  with  the  clergy  for  this  same  great  ob- 
ject, which  is  national;  if  the  generous  spirit  which  anima- 
ted their  fathers,  during  half  a  century,  after  the  Restoration,* 
when  they  had  learned  in  the  day  of  suffering  the  value  of 
their  church,  and  in  the  moment  of  joy  at  its  re-establish- 
ment welcomed  it  with  gifts, — if  tliat  spirit  would  stir  in 
them  also;  if  they  would  re-annex,   as  was   then  done  so 
commonly,  to  these   their  own  livings  (we  ask  no  more), 
some  portion,  however   small,  of  the  tithes  which  they  en- 
joy, and  which  were  all  wrung  from  the  church;  a  sacrifice 
which,  from  its  amount,  would  scarcely  be  felt  by  many  pa- 
trons, and  which  would  not,  in  fact,  be  an  alienation  of  so 
much  property,  but  rather  a  regulation  of  the  course  in 
which  it  should  run;  a  reduction,  perhaps,  of  fifty  or  a  hun- 
dred pounds  a  year  from  an  elder  brother's  rent-roll,  to  the 
augmentation  to  the  like  amount  of  a  younger  brother's  be- 
nefice;— if  the  patron  and  impropriator  could  be  persuaded 
thus  to  act,  the  necessity  for  non-residence  and  pluralities 
would  be  still  more  rapidly  diminished,   and  the  national 
church  would  soon  be  placed  in   a  more  impregnable  posi- 
tion than  she  has  ever  assumed   in   this  particular,  either 
since  the  Reformation  or  before  it.     And  without   urging 
higher    motives,  without   urging    even    the    feudal   nature 
of   all    property   in    one    sense,   held,    under     God,    the 
Lord  of  all,  on   condition  of  suit  and    service   to  be  done, 
and  not  as  an  absolute  possession  to  be  dealt  with  altoge- 
ther according  to  the  pleasure  of   the  occupant — without 
pressing  this  consideration  (which  is  nevertheless  a  sound 
one),  v/e  shall  be  borne  out  in  saying,  that  the  possessor  of 
property  best  secures  the  permanent  enjoyment  of  it  by  se- 
curing a  righteous  population  to  his  country;  that  the   re- 
spect or  contempt  of  the  laws  of  the  land  in  our  parishes, 
and  particularly  in  our  rural  parishes,  is  not  a  little  depend- 

*  Kennet  on  Impropriations,  p.  297. 


CONCLUSION.  297 

ent  on  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  village  pastor;  that  to 
insure  the  local  benefit  of  his  residence,  therefore,  may  be 
worth  the  while  of  any  man  who  has  a  stake  to  lose;  and 
that,  though  it  may  entail  upon  him  the  relinquishment  of  a 
trifle  which  he  may  strictly  call  his  own;  and  with  which 
he  may  certainly  do  what  he  will;  still,  it  may  be  for  his 
consideration  whether  there  is  not  thatscattereth  and  yetin- 
creaseth,  and  whether  there  is  not  that  withholdeth  more 
than  is  meet,  and  it  tendeth  unto  poverty. 

Such  is  our  sketch  of  this  great  religious  revolution:  for 
which,  that  it  came  when  it  did,  we  have  surely,  in  these 
days,  reason  to  give  God  hearty  thanks.  For  to  the  Refor- 
mation we  owe  it,  that  a  knowledge  of  religion  has  kept 
pace  in  the  country  with  other  knowledge;  and  that,  in  the 
general  advance  of  science,  and  the  general  appetite  for  en- 
quiry, this  paramount  principle  of  all  has  been  placed  in  a 
position  to  require  nothing  but  a  fair  field  and  no  favour,  in 
order  to  assert  its  just  pretensions.  We  are  here  embar- 
rassed by  no  dogmas  of  corrupt  and  unenlightened  times, 
still  riveted  upon  our  reluctant  acceptance  by  an  idea  of  pa- 
pal or  synodical  infallibility;  but  stand  with  the  Bible  in  our 
hands,  prepared  to  abide  by  the  doctrines  we  can  discover 
in  it,  because  furnished  with  evidences  for  its  truth  (thanks 
to  the  Reformation  for  this  also!)  which  appeal  to  the  under- 
standing, and  to  the  understanding  only;  so  that  no  man 
competently  acquainted  with  them  need  shrink  from  the  en- 
counter of  the  infidel;  or  feel,  for  a  moment,  that  his  faith  is 
put  to  shame  by  his  philosophy.  Infidelity  there  may  be  in 
the  country,  for  there  will  ever  be  men  who  will  not  trouble 
themselves  to  examine  the  grounds  of  their  religion,  and  men 
who  will  not  dare  to  do  it;  but  how  far  more  intense  would  it 
have  been,  and  more  dangerous,  had  the  spirit  of  the  times  been, 
in  other  respects,  what  it  is,  and  the  Reformation  yet  to  come, 
religion   yet  to   be  exonerated  of  weights  which  sunk   it 


298  REFORMATION  IN  ENGLAND. 

heretofore  in  this  country,  and  still  sink  it  in  countries  around 
us;  enquiry  to  be  resisted  in  an  age  of  curiosity;  opinions  to 
be  bolstered  up  (for  they  may  not  be  retracted)  in  an  age  of 
incredulity;  and  pageants  to  be  addressed  to  the  senses,  in- 
stead of  arguments  to  the  reason,  in  an  age  which,  at  least, 
calls  itself  profound.  As  it  is,  we  have  nothing  to  conceal; 
nothing  to  evade;  nothing  to  impose;  the  reasonableness,  as 
well  as  righteousness,  of  our  reformed  faith  recommends  it; 
and  whatever  may  be  the  shocks  it  may  have  to  sustain  from 
scoffs,  and  doubts,  and  clamour,  and  licentiousness,  and  se- 
ditious tongues,  and  an  abused  press,  it  will  itself,  we  doubt 
not,  prevail  against  them  all,  and  save,  too  (as  we  trust), 
the  nation  which  has  cherished  it,  from  the  terrible  evils, 
both  moral,  social,  and  political,  that  come  of  a  heart  of  un- 
belief. 


THE  END. 


« 


Date  Ehie 

«;     '  ■ 

vfr'""" - 

»a»sf»^'^     . 

.^.-^-'^^"i 

E 

' 

' 

f) 

